Mark Billingham Quotes

I like the eclipses, the synaptic jumps of short stories. The reader has to participate very actively in the experience.

My major allegiance has been to storytelling, not to history.

I simply love writing good stories, that's my passion.

A work of fiction is conceived very much the same way as a dream occurs in the mind of a sleeper. But a lot of it is imagination. It's not based on real people.

The novel space is a pure space. I'm nobody once I go into that room. I'm not gay, I'm not bald, I'm not Irish. I'm not anybody. I'm nobody. I'm the guy telling the story, and the only person that matters is the person reading that story, the target. It's to get that person to feel what I'm trying to dramatize.

I think I'm a born storyteller. Inspiration is all around me. I can read a newspaper article and come up with an idea for a book.

I always had an interest in telling stories.

It would appear that I just love writing many different stories.

I guess I've always just been naturally inclined to tell stories.

I would imagine that anyone picking up a book written by me would expect a fast-paced story that requires minimal effort to turn the pages. The reader would also be looking for some out-of-the-ordinary revelations along the way. At the end of the day, I'm a writer who simply loves revealing stuff that is out-of-the-ordinary.

When I give myself over to a good novel, I surrender to the truths fashioned from one writer's heart, mind and soul. I do not waste a nanosecond wondering whether what I'm reading 'really happened.'

Fiction is a lie that is told in the service of truth.

A good scenario doesn't make a good science fiction story - but it's a setting within which a good science fiction story might be told.

I started writing stories in my spare time.

There is a great insatiable hunger for good stories throughout the media.

At a certain moment, I decided to write a story. I had no more small children to tell them stories.

Cut quarrels out of literature, and you will have very little history or drama or fiction or epic poetry left.

It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.

I'm not nearly smart enough or imaginative enough to tackle the novel form. Never happen.

I simply love writing good stories; that's my passion.

I like short stories.

A story invites both writer and reader into a kind of superficial ease: we want to slide along, pleasingly entertained, lost in the fictional dream.

Furthermore, even if ideas were gettable - say, stacked in a secluded cave like the Dead Sea scrolls - I wouldn't go there. An 'idea,' especially one adhered to from start to finish, can be disastrous for a compelling piece of fiction.

I'm a writer. I just love telling stories.

It never ceases to amaze me that readers who are willing to suspend their disbelief when it comes to the motivation of a vicious serial killer get high and mighty because I have put a coffee shop where there isn't one. Er... it's a novel. I made one up. I'm allowed to make stuff up. I'd go as far as to suggest that I make stuff up for a living.