Wilbur Smith Quotes

People want good stories.

I'm a storyteller, not a prophet. I'm just interested in a good story.

All that non-fiction can do is answer questions. It's fiction's business to ask them.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

I'm a fan of great storytelling.

I think I'm always drawn to a good story.

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

People really want to believe that there is no fiction. I think they find it much easier to imagine that novelists are writing memoirs, writing about their lives, because it's difficult to conceive that there's a great imaginary life in which you can participate.

I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting.

All fiction has to have a certain amount of truth in it to be powerful.

Fiction basically is a form of gossip where you want to enter other people's lives, the lives of people you don't know, and you want to know what's going to happen to them.

My stories include realistic fiction and fantasy.

Fiction is all about vicarious experiences and getting into other people's heads in a way that no other art form lets you.

I love being a storyteller. I love telling stories.

In making up stories, as in reading stories, I could create a contained world in which an experience is shared in its entirety.

People aren't coming to me looking for political essays or polemic - they're looking for a rattling good story.

I feel like I'm a professional storyteller, really. A lot of people say 'a truth teller,' and, if the writing supports it, that's what your aim is: to try and present people with a series of truths, and then they can make up their mind about those and whether they have any real credence or weight.

I'm a total slave to a good story.

I want to be a part of stories.

Fiction is organized gossip.

As human beings, it's good to build stories.

Any fictional story will take things from real events.

I don't care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told.

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author's world.

My novels are certainly more exciting than my own life.