Hunter S. Thompson Quotes

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

I've been falsely accused of drawing too much from real life. But I am a petty thief - I take little things. And, I mean, I can hardly write 10 words before I start to make things up. I start to invent, because that's what I want to do. I'm running away to an invented place.

In all my books, I try to have a strong element of realism underlying the fantastic.

Realism isn't something most people associate with the fantasy genre, yet it's an essential element of great fantasy writing.

Anyone who has set out to invent a purely imaginary story knows that the whole thing is fantasy, from beginning to end; there must be a sense of magic created about the most restrained of naturalism.

A few people have tried to make me see that my writing isn't quite their thing by saying to me: 'What about realism?' To which my general response is, 'What about it?' However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of my favorite writers, Marilynne Robinson, was to say something similar if asked 'What about the fantastic?'

At the end of the day, it's about the reader's attachment to and belief in the magical elements that make or break magical realism.

I don't quite operate within the realist mode. I kind of push the stories out towards the cusp of believability - that's the area of interest for me.

'Cry Baby' is like this fairytale version of me. A lot of it is based on real events, and some of it is made up to make it more whimsical.

Sci-fi and horror, particularly, allow a storyteller to depart from, let's say, the demands of cinema verite or kitchen-sink realism or, even, just relatable dramas and can go into areas that are either - in the case of horror - more primally effective or, in the case of sci-fi, more speculative or imaginative.

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.

I love stories, I love myths, I love fairytales, I love Kafka.

The genres of the fantastic and the grotesque are far more interesting to me than most mnemonic fiction.

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.

In creating the Harry Potter artwork, I try to bring a certain amount of realism and believability to the characters and setting, but still add an element of wonder and the unknown.

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

No matter what you write, you actually can't help retelling a fairy tale somewhere along the way.

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

I feel like we've found an interesting little corner of the sandbox here as far as the way we're telling sci-fi stories. I don't think it's limited to sci-fi - I think anything fantastic can co-exist with people you and I know, and not these hyper-real movie people.

My secrets must be poetic to be believable.

The fact is, for all the critics' talk about me as a realist, I'm making everything up - everything. It is all about imagining with me.

On that other novels followed: but I still wrote fairy tales and dreamy poems of another world.

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.

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

The role of fiction is supposed to be divorced from the role of reality.