Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

Like all novelists, I'm interested in the filters between reality and the imagination.

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it's such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction.

I like going back and writing fiction.

The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up.

The more fiction you read and write, the more you'll find your paragraphs forming on their own.

I write novels and other things.

Every now and then I'll do little things, a short story or something, that doesn't have any fantastical elements, but mostly I like the power of playing God and I like to imagine things.

Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.

I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.

Take it from me: I really love making things up, which is why I write fiction for a living.

A work of fiction is conceived very much the same way as a dream occurs in the mind of a sleeper. But a lot of it is imagination. It's not based on real people.

I make things up for a living. It would be pretty boring to just fictionalize real people.

I read a lot of fiction.

All of my novels are seeded in real life events, and 'The Wreckage' is no different.

For me, movies and television are interesting because they are the dominant storytelling form of our time. My first love will always be fiction, and especially novels, but I'm a writer... I write poetry and essays and criticism and I'd love to write a whole play, and sometimes I even write scripts.

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over world-building.

I feel like reading really defined me as a writer because I lived my life outside of my own body for so much of my life and I loved it. I've always been a reader. I think living all those stories served me to naturally take that next step to creating.

I've just always been very interested in story above all.

Novel-writing is, for the novelist, a game of let's pretend.

Fantasy is fantasy. It's fiction. It's not meant to be a textbook. I don't believe in letting research overwhelm the fiction. That's a danger of science fiction in particular, as opposed to fantasy. A lot of writers forget that what they're doing is supposed to be art.

I should say, I don't write about myself or my life. So for me, in fiction, it's always been about what I can dream up, that feels far away from me.

When you do fiction, it is your imagination you have put out there.

My books aren't autobiographical.

Fiction needs writers and readers, and writers should cultivate both.