Ruth Ozeki Quotes

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.

A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape.

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

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

I'm much more interested in allowing a story to happen, and people find whatever meaning is in there.

My secrets must be poetic to be believable.

Literature is the question minus the answer.

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

My mind has become somewhat like a book. What I mean by that is that when I look at the world, I see it as a story.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

Some stories are true that never happened.

When I'm writing, I like to have a tiny bit of fact and then exaggerate it and turn it into something more people could relate to.

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.

Fiction allows us to both evade truth and to approach it - or, rather, it's fiction that allows us to 'construct' our world. It's haunted by the unimaginable and the unspeakable.

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

A story can fly like a bee, so straight and swift you catch only the hum of its passing. Or move so slowly it seems motionless, curled in upon itself like a snake in the sun. It can vanish like smoke before the wind. Linger like perfume in the nose. Change with every telling, yet always remain the same.

Fiction is Truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story.

There is a real connection between Philosopy and fiction.

Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.

If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable rather than its literal narrative.

Fiction is a house with many stately mansions, but also one in which it is wise, at least sometimes, to swing from the chandeliers.

Artists don't make objects. Artists make mythologies.

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?

There really isn't a story that you can't tell inside of it. It's very much a clearinghouse for anything that goes on in the world. So you're not at all limited.

For me, literature is a complex game, both mental and concrete, which is acted out in a physical manner on the page.