Chris Bohjalian Quotes

In a book, you can create a world in your imagination that's as intricate as you want. Even something like 'Angels & Demons.' I was reading it, thinking, 'This is incredible! This is so scary!'

I love horror, fantasy and sci-fi. Those are my genres of love and devotion.

What do you do in a novel? You take recognizable characters from your own life, and you fantasize about what they're really like.

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 love the paranormal, because there, every genre I write can become one beacon for my imagination.

I'm a huge sci-fi/fantasy/horror guy. I love anything in the sci-fi or fantasy genre.

I always take a story that's kind of out there, like an urban myth. I take some possibility that people imagine, that they are familiar with, and try to turn it into a story.

I've never turned into a bee - I've never been chased by a mummy or met a ghost. But many of the ideas in my books are suggested by real life.

The stories I write are often literal to events that have happened or observations that I've made, and sometimes they're fantastical.

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

A lot of things that I write about have happened to people around me, if not necessarily to me or in the organizations I've worked in. Having said that, it's fiction and has a lot to do with my imagination and creativity.

I take inspiration from my life but only twenty per cent is real the rest is all made up.

Obviously any fiction is going to be a combination of what is invented, what is overheard, what is experienced, what is experienced by people close to you, what you are told, what you have read, all mixed together into this kind of soup which, like any good soup, at the end you cannot really distinguish the ingredients.

As a child I loved ghost stories.

A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.

I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror.

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.

While novels are fiction, mine are usually very close to my heart. Like my other books, 'The Lemon Orchard' is inspired by something I care about. I care so deeply. The stories are my dreams, and I want to do a lot of research. Roberto is based on a real live friend of mine named Armando who worked in my garden.

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.'

I like something where I can really use my imagination and be an active participant in the construction of the monster and usually that's in the world of the supernatural or the world of the fantastic, so that's why those kinds of stories about demons and the supernatural appeal to me or maybe I'm really interested in that subject.

I just write the books that I think I would want to read.

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.

Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.

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

Everyone has early fiction fantasies, but it wasn't until my second child Betsy was born that I allowed the urge to write a novel bubble up.