Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes

It's not just that reporting gives you a bigger slice of life, gives - lends verisimilitude to what you are doing - it's that it feeds the imagination.

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

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

Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.

If you want to write about people, you can make it up. But if you spend time talking to someone and examining what it is you want to write about, you discover a level of detail that you wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

Write what you know.

I really like writing from real-life experiences. Audiences seem to prefer the stuff I couldn't have made up.

You don't have to go fight bulls in Spain like Hemingway to write something great, or go off to war. It's right under your nose.

The thing that inspires me most is reading and just observing the people around me. I think those are the two things that make me want to write.

fiction is founded on truth....unless things did happen,people couldn't think of them.

Every fiction has its base in fact.

The writer has three sources: imagination, observation, and experience

Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn't matter how "real" your story is, or how "made up": what matters is its necessity.

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.

There's no game plan when it comes to thinking up new characters; inspiration can come from anything - from a wig I've seen to an expression I've heard someone use.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.

I tell my writing students that everything is material; just pay attention.

I think the most important thing when you're telling a story is to just tell the story as best as you possibly can.

I prefer writing originals.

I think writers are observers and watchers. We always have our ears open and eyes open, so I might see something in everyday life that inspires me. And I think that's probably more than anything else. Everyday life is where I get my inspiration.

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

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you're a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you're casually talking to says something that makes you so mad - you can create an entire scenario around that.

I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn't pay any attention at all. Sometimes it's me, or a composite of me and other people. Sometimes it's not me at all.

My books are inert as cordwood till a reader's imagination ignites one and an old flame jumps to life.

Quite often, little germs of ideas have come from something that I've observed or someone's told me. The process of it becoming fiction is expanding and extending it: stretching the rubber band of reality.