Peter Landesman Quotes

So much of what I write in fiction is based on true stories.

Most of my stories have some basis in fact.

Novel writing should never be confused with journalism. Unfortunately, in the case of Primary Colors, a fair number of journalists confused.

It's not just that reporting gives you a bigger slice of life, gives - lends verisimilitude to what you are doing - it's that it feeds the imagination.

I create fictional narratives, but it's based on literal people.

I love to run smart essays and commentary. But it doesn't replace the other kind of reporting.

It's such a rich experience when you enter into a subject from a documentary point of view. It's hard for fiction to compete with that.

I've got a particular way of writing novels, and that carries over into the way I write comics and games, too. I'm a news journalist by background, so I approach everything as reporting - I treat it as real, I ask the questions I'd ask in a real situation, and I let the characters speak for themselves.

I always like to write where I'm at in real life into whatever I'm working on.

I always like when things are loosely based on real events. That always makes it more interesting because there's a lot of research you can do.

It is easy to make stuff up - and easy to dig up information and repeat it or report it to others. But to find a real life story with real people in real life situations is quite difficult and time-consuming. Yet, the rewards are worth the effort.

The people who are writing online and the people in my genre of creative non-fiction exert a great deal more freedom that journalists are allowed to exert in their day-to-day work.

I really like writing from real-life experiences. Audiences seem to prefer the stuff I couldn't have made up.

Symbolism is alright in 'fiction,' but I tell true life stories simply about what happened to people I knew.

I've done quite a few things based on real events or real people, and I think that's always really interesting that you can read about them or, if you're lucky, you can meet them.

I am touched by my readers who loved my books. All the stories are true incidents in life. Now I have realised, any amount of imagination will not be as beautiful as the real life.

I ask questions. I watch the world. And what I have discovered is that the parts of my fiction that people most tell me are 'unbelievable' are those that are most closely based on the real, those least diluted by my imagination.

The materials of the novelist must be real; they must be gathered from the field of humanity by his actual observation.

I've done a number of things based on real people or true stories or based on books, and I'm a great believer that you have to be true to the script.

The big moment for me was making 'All the President's Men'. It was not about Watergate or President Nixon. I wanted to focus on something I thought not many people knew about: How do journalists get the story?

I frequently have scenes that take place in places I've never been or characters who have professions that I know nothing about that I've got to research. But that's what Google is for.

Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.

I'm a fast writer, and crime novels are easy to do. It's much harder to write a 1,000 word article, where everything has to be 100 per cent correct.

What I do is write, and I try to write as closely as I can into what I call 'the mystery.'

Only occasionally do I read new fiction. Most of my reading is heavily dictated by what I'm writing at the time.