Dennis Lehane Quotes

I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete.

Mark Helprin and Lawrence Durrell, both of whom write fat and florid novels that appall me now but opened my eyes to the power of fiction when I was in my 20s.

I would like to write a book that wasn't so violent and weird, but I just don't think I can do that with my talent. I don't think it would come off.

Yes - 90% of fantasy is crap. And so is 90% of science fiction and 90% of mystery fiction and 90% of literary fiction.

I love contemporary North American fiction and short fiction. My favorite writer is Jonathan Franzen, and my favorite writers of short fiction are George Saunders and Alice Munro.

There are things I read doing research, and there are certain books and writers I just love to read. There are books of Brian Morten's that I love, for instance. There's a wonderful book by an Australian writer named Helen Garner called 'The Children's Bach,' and I just love the way she uses language in it.

Literary fiction - if we must use the term - is not the plotless, meandering indulgence that its detractors would have you believe.

It's perceived as an accolade to be published as a 'literary' writer, but, actually, it's pompous and it's fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself.

It wasn't until I started to read short stories - by people like Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, John Updike... Eudora Welty - that I became excited about the possibilities of writing.

I think most short story writers, at one time or another, over the course of several books, naturally skirt near the edge of one genre or another.

Early influences included Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel, Charles Baxter, Richard Ford, Alice Munro, Denis Johnson - writers who are important to me still and who I discovered through my teachers.

I don't like to talk about work in progress, but the novel I'm working on now is definitely not horror.

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

It's funny, because I don't think of myself as a novelist. I think of myself as a writer.

I want prose fiction to be recognized as that, and I'm not interested in writing as it becomes more personal.

I have no favourite genre or style but treat each novel with the same care, imagination and craftsmanship. It's as difficult to write a crime or a children's novel with a touch of style and grace as it is a literary novel.

You're not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.

Poetry, fiction as novels or short stories - these are autonomous as created by their authors. They should stand on their own, like pieces of furniture that should be judged as to their usefulness, elegance.

I'm just interested in serialization in fiction. I'm fascinated by it. I love the 19th-century novels. I'm interested in ways to bring that back to fiction.

My fiction-writing DNA shows in how I think about prose, how I think about the page, how I think nonfiction stories should work. And every piece of nonfiction I write, I want it to have fictional texture.

I am not Shakespeare or Hemingway, but I have written stories on tennis that were brilliant.

I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist.

I love to read. And right now I'm on my last hundred pages of 'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen, and I really enjoyed it. His writing is just - he's one of those writers where you just go, 'There are people just meant to be novel writers.'

'Gone-Away World' was a shotgun blast, an explosion out of the box I'd put myself into writing film scripts. 'Tigerman' is shorter, tighter, more crafted.

I don't teach literature from my perspective as 'Joyce Carol Oates.' I try to teach fiction from the perspective of each writer. If I'm teaching a story by Hemingway, my endeavor is to present the story that Hemingway wrote in its fullest realization.