Edmund Burke Quotes

I never fantasized or invented a thing, not one thing. I knew every single thing I ever wrote about.

Every fiction has its base in fact.

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

Some music comes from a real place; some music comes from your imagination. It's difficult to find out what's real and what's not, especially with the gangster stuff.

As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.

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.

A play is fiction - and fiction is fact distilled into truth.

The truth is that every writer, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, is trying to write something truly original and that's what I think I'm doing.

I think that truth is stranger than fiction, and it's nice to know the people you're making a movie about.

I make it all up, and all of it is true.

My books aren't autobiographical.

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn.

Readers would email me and say, 'Please write a novel about so-and-so,' but it has to come from yourself and not so much from your readership.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

I'll take a certain concern of my own or a situation and try to frame it around a fictional story, but sometimes just straight-up autobiographical songs work well, and sometimes a story is better. I like stories. I like to hear them. I don't think there are enough of them in songs anymore.

I prefer writing originals.

Kids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.'

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

You want to do something that shows some type individuality and talent and imagination - at the same time, you want to be truthful to the predecessors, because obviously the audience liked something about them and you have to replicate that experience to a certain extent.

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.

All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened.

I seem most instinctively to believe in the human value of creative writing, whether in the form of verse or fiction, as a mode of truth-telling, self-expression and homage to the twin miracles of creation and consciousness.

Writers should be applauded for their ability to make things up.

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.