Joshua Oppenheimer Quotes

Sci-fi's great, but you don't have to hit people over the head with it when you're making a social comment. It just inherently exists within the fabric of the story.

Like all writers, I draw from life as I know it; but it's a refracted kind of reality, and none of it is factually true.

My secrets must be poetic to be believable.

Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds.

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

I've always said fantasy is sort of 'stealth philosophy'.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

I think it's fun to play with worlds that you can add a lot of your own imagination to. With 'True Blood,' you're not limited by anything, there are just leaps and bounds of the imagination you can take with these characters.

Neil Gaiman is a star. He constructs stories like some demented cook might make a wedding cake, building layer upon layer, including all kinds of sweet and sour in the mix.

Fiction accesses a certain kind of truth through artifice. I love to create worlds that operate on their own terms.

There is a real connection between Philosopy and fiction.

I'm just a story teller.

To tell a good story and to illuminate the world: the two things are completely linked. That is the point. That is what I've always wanted to do.

Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.

First of all, writing at best - certainly fiction writing - more and more I think is magic.

Fantasy and science fiction are where my brain lives.

Most of my short stories are fantasy.

Writers can take offense when someone asks what's real or autobiographical in our work because, to us, that's not what counts. The bits taken from life are tiny scales on the dragon's tail - what about that whole beautiful writhing, fire-breathing dragon?

I like to think of myself as a storyteller.

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

I used to tell strange, wild, improbable tales akin to ghost stories, and discovered a taste for spinning yarns.

Despite the impression you may have from watching too much TV, movies are not about reproducing reality. They're about telling stories.

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.

When I was little, I made up my own fairy tales, and the ghostly echo of 'Once upon a time' shapes all the fiction I've ever written.