Edward Albee Quotes

For every Scott Fitzgerald concerned with the precise word and the selection of relevant incident, there are a hundred American writers, many well-regarded, who appear to believe that one word is just as good as another and that everything which occurs to them is worth putting down.

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

You can tell within a sentence if something is fiction or non-fiction. You can tell in the artifice of the language or the care of the construction the difference between art and life.

Obviously, I like to write stories that are page-turners. But I always try my very, very hardest to be as factually true as possible.

Robert Ludlum, all of them, write the absolute best they can. You can't tone it down. You just do what you do, and if it comes out literary, so be it.

I don't believe a poet has a better hold on truth or morality than a fiction writer has. And I don't think a fiction writer has anything over a journalist. It's all about the good word, properly inserted.

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.

There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.

I think fiction is a very serious thing, that while it is fiction, it is also a revelation of truth, or facts.

You can fake a lot of stuff, but you can't fake if the story isn't there and if the writing isn't good.

My books aren't autobiographical.

My thing is to try to tell the truth as honestly as possible. For me, the weight is, how can I tell the truth through fiction, the best that I can?

Every fiction has its base in fact.

A lot of times you get people writing wonderful sentences and paragraphs, and they fall in love with their prose style, but the stories really aren't that terrific.

The thing I am attracted to is just good writing and stories that are based somewhat in reality.

A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market - it knows nothing about target markets.

I never fantasized or invented a thing, not one thing. I knew every single thing I ever wrote about.

I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn't pay any attention at all. Sometimes it's me, or a composite of me and other people. Sometimes it's not me at all.

Stephen King has inspired me with his humor and honesty, and his admonition that the author's job is to tell the truth.

A book can be wonderful and powerful and accessible and artful all at the same time.

A good autobiography is like a document: a mirror of the age on which people can 'depend.' In a novel, by contrast, it's not the facts that matter, but precisely what you add to the facts.

Ultimately, it's about the quality of the writing whatever style you are writing.

Literature, of course, is not a contest.

I do not make stories up, full stop.

I don't really do themes. I might accidentally, but themes are an emergent phenomena of the writing of the book, of just trying to get a story out there.