Dorothy Dunnett Quotes

He just kind of talks them through, and then I get the fun part cause I get to make up the stories.

Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.

The idea led me into the research, which continues to give me more ideas for the story.

I think that one of the things you have to do to become a storyteller is spend a lot of time reading stories.

I don't think you can teach someone how to come up with good characters or a story.

Every fiction has its base in fact.

The stories tend to be what I work on when I'm stuck. Something will just pop into my head and I'll think that's more of a story.

I think, if you want to grow a novelist, for that person to have a lot of boring time trying to entertain themselves is very important.

Writing is more about imagination than anything else. I fell in love with words. I fell in love with storytelling.

Research for fiction is a funny thing: you go looking for one piece of information, and find something altogether different.

I don't ever want to impose something on the story. I want the story to tell me.

There are a few really fantastic stories left, and that kind of gives you some inspiration to find even new ones.

I write 'by the seat of my pants.' I love to do research. I am inspired by contemporary writers and contemporary events. I live in the real world.

I'm great at telling stories with the kids. I do all my different accents. We make our own stories up all the time, the four of us, me and Hannah and the kids.

I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.

I could come up with 50 stories that I am thinking about.

Encourage children to write their own stories, and then don't rain on their parade. Don't say, 'That's not true.' Applaud flights of fantasy. Help with spelling and grammar, but stand up and cheer the use of imagination.

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.

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

Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.

I don't believe that anything's totally invented... If you're completely inventing a story, there wouldn't be an urge to tell it.

I think I've got a decent imagination. I hope some of my stories inspire other young imaginations.

Nothing much interested me other than playing with language and telling stories and doing something with the wonders of the world around me.

I hate thinking about writer's block! I don't have writer's block much, knock on wood, but if I do, I think it's usually because I haven't done enough research and am therefore unable to create a fully realized world.

In order to dream, you need to have a springboard which is the facts... It gives it that touch of reality, and I think that's quite important... truth with fiction.