Randy Alcorn Quotes

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

A good scenario doesn't make a good science fiction story - but it's a setting within which a good science fiction story might be told.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

My heroes were never scientists. They were Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood, you know, good writers.

Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil.

Writing stories is the habit of lying put to good use.

In really, really good science fiction, the line between the science and the fiction is blurry.

The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion.

I don't look at stories in genres. A good story is a good story, no matter what planet it happens on, whether the characters are mice or human or whatever. That's how I look at it.

Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.

I just want to make stories. They don't have to have a moral or a reason. There might be some mild cautionary notes, but they're not moral. They don't impart any Judeo-Christian ethic of any kind.

If you are a novelist of a certain type of temperament, then what you really want to do is re-invent the world. God wasn't too bad a novelist, except he was a Realist.

It's no sin to tell a good story.

I see myself as a story teller.

Writing is incidental to my primary objective, which is spinning a good yarn. I view myself as a storyteller more than a writer. The story - and hence the extensive research that goes into each one of my books - is much more important than the words that I use to narrate it.

Fiction is the best way I know how to think something through.

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

Words are potent weapons for all causes, good or bad.

I think of myself as a storyteller, and that is it.

The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.

I don't want to spoil the magic, but it's a very curious thing that honestly baffles me. It's the nearest we'll ever get to playing God, to suddenly produce these fully formed creatures. It is a bit odd. Other aspects you work out more - you rework sentences, you rework imagery. But not characters.

If I had to choose between a relative and a good story, I would take the story.

When I was a teenager, I got into SF, quite heavily, and that too has had a major impact on my writing.

I found out a long time ago that if I didn't have a good story for a song, I could just make one up! Now it seems over half the stories in my show are made up. The funny thing is, those seem to be the ones that resonate the most with the audiences.

People still love a good story, and I don't think that will change.