Mal Peet Quotes

I think anything goes in fiction as long as it fits within the interior logic of the work itself and is presented in a disciplined manner.

I've tried very hard and I've never found any resemblance between the people I know and the people in my novels.

Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything.

Every now and then I'll do little things, a short story or something, that doesn't have any fantastical elements, but mostly I like the power of playing God and I like to imagine things.

When writing fiction, you only have to know enough to be convincing on the page. I mean really convincing, of course - but you don't need academic depth.

Sometimes I read a script and it's obvious from early on that it's one where the suspension of disbelief has to develop strongly from page one. Some are more reality-based.

It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore.

As long as you have ideas, you can keep going. That's why writing fiction is so much fun: because you're moving people about, and making settings for them to move in, so there's always something there to keep working on.

A novel wouldn't be a book if there weren't some flights of fancy on the part of the author, stopping time to examine things, or to tell a joke.

I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it's such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction.

The best thing about being a fiction writer is that where the truth is inconvenient, I could veer away.

Writing fiction, there are no limits to what you write as long as it increases the value of the paper you are writing on.

Writing fiction, I really just sit there and it just comes.

In TV writing, I felt like Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians. There's so much more freedom in fiction writing.

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.

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.

Part of the reason I wanted to write a novel was that in fiction I could do something that's difficult to do in real life, which is to dwell on the stark details of the experience without really needing to create that narrative of redemption.

Everyone else thinks I'm a nonfiction writer. I think it's because my nonfiction is easier to find. But I write both in equal measure. I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself, and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.

Being a novelist, you can roam around with a story and indulge yourself.

I should say, I don't write about myself or my life. So for me, in fiction, it's always been about what I can dream up, that feels far away from me.

The things that I'm interested in directing are fiction, because then you're not married to a particular reality.

When you do fiction, it is your imagination you have put out there.

As a writer of fiction, you don't ever want to limit the characters you create to the life you've lived. That's insanity to me.

I'm always excited about stories that allow me to explore a character and create interesting stories and worlds that we haven't seen before.

As writers, our job is to try to create, in a fake space, something that feels true. That's just straight-up fiction: Invent a character that doesn't exist; make them seem like they do.