Imre Kertesz Quotes

Historians have to deal with facts and they are committed to the facts. The trouble is that facts are imperfect. The novelist comes up with an imaginary structure. This is not what happened. It is what could have happened. And sometimes this brings more understanding …

I like writing historical fiction.

When it comes to memoir, we want to catch the author in a lie. When we read fiction, we want to catch the author telling the truth.

One important idea I hope is reflected in 'The Poe Shadow' is that fiction can add as much to history as nonfiction does.

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

A memoir is my version of events. My perspective. I choose what to tell and what to omit. I choose the adjectives to describe a situation, and in that sense, I'm creating a form of fiction.

I wouldn't want to write a biography of anyone. I'd feel too inhibited by the facts and too much pressure to do the subject's life justice.

A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

I think fiction recues history from its confusions.

Fiction has to be plausible. All history has to do is happen.

Fact and fiction are different truths.

This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't.

Truth is not always injured by fiction.

Every fiction has its base in fact.

By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.

There is a document in every novel in the world. Even in the most fantastic novel, even in science fiction, there is a documentary side. But, this side is not the crux of the matter.

The best writers attempt to become alternative historians.

Truth is stranger than nonfiction. And life is too interesting to be left to journalists. People have stories, but journalists have 'takes,' and it's their takes that usually win out when the stories are too complicated or, as happens, not complicated enough.

I'm a storyteller, not a prophet. I'm just interested in a good story.

There can be no literary equivalent to truth.

There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.

Everyone seems quite good at stories and making them up.

All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened.

Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things.

Maybe I will write a memoir, perhaps I'll do some essays, or maybe I will write a mystery story.