Marguerite Young Quotes

Fiction lags after truth.

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.

I try to write about things that actually happened so that I know it's real before I put it down on paper.

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.

When it comes to memoir, we want to catch the author in a lie. When we read fiction, we want to catch the author telling the truth.

Writers do draw inspiration from their own lives, which, quite frankly, might be more interesting than fiction.

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

I've found that using historical material and being rooted in historical material is liberating because I always think to myself, 'Well, this actually happened, and this is fantastic!' That's why I don't like fantasy, in a way. Because it's sort of in emptiness.

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.

A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places.

Every writer is going to end up drawing from their own experiences in one way or another.

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

I don't write autobiographically.

My books aren't autobiographical.

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

Let me tell you what, reality is better than any script you could ever write.

Every fiction has its base in fact.

Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!

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

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

Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense.

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

Heaven knows, I've exposed myself in my novels through the use of fantasy and imagination... now my new book is about what really happened to me... not my heroines.

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.

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.