40 Quotes About Writing-fiction

"I have an idea and a first line -- and that suggests the rest of it. I have little concept of what I’m going to say, or where it’s going. I have some idea of how long it’s going to be -- but not what will happen or what the themes will be. That’s the intrigue of doing it -- it’s a process of discovery. You get to discover what you’re going to say and what it’s going to mean."

"The first thing I check once I’m inside a story is the emotional weather. Is there a storm coming? What’s the temperature, and how powerful are the winds? The difference between walking on water and sliding one’s ass across slick ice is only a matter of degree."

"Ultimately, nobody is predictable, least of all to himself…there wouldn’t be any point in writing fiction otherwise."

"The Fiction defense. Sometimes I just need to use it."

"Writing fiction is the act of extending empathy to or beyond its natural limits."

"From the moment we are born, we are swaddled in stories."

"Stories pervade our lives. This inundation of content makes us all export story listeners, or expert story readers, but only a few of us dare to become expert story tellers. We dare to add our tales to the collective memory of mankind that stretches back to early cave paintings."

"Themes are the very souls of stories."

"My job takes up many daylight hours, it wakes me in the still of night and fills my head with ghosts and monsters but I love it, telling stories is what I was born to do."