Jen Lancaster Quotes

I think it's nearly impossible to write something fictional without having it be about yourself in some way or another.

Everything is autobiographical, and nothing is autobiographical. That's fiction.

It is so common to write autobiographical fiction in which your own experience is thinly disguised.

I don't write autobiographically.

I'm not really an autobiographical writer, though I use lots of stuff from my life to make my stories seem real. But when I actually write about myself, I get very confused.

I think all writing is necessarily autobiographical to a greater or lesser extent, and the less it tries to be confessional, the more likely it is that you're somehow sneaking the things you need to say in there.

Each time I write a new piece, whether a novel, a picture book, a speech or anything, really, it has so much to do with what I'm going through personally or a problem I'm trying to work out. When I wrote my novel 'Baby,' my three children had all just gone out the door.

I create fictional narratives, but it's based on literal people.

All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at the same time, a novel is never autobiographical even if it describes the life of the author. Literary writing is a completely different medium.

I'll write about myself, or people I know, or archetypal characters, but the goal is to get at some truth, not to necessarily convey my own experience as an individual to the world.

Actually, that's one of the things I was thinking about writing a story about me, loosely based or autobiographical. I just don't want to be like some people that are in their twenties and writing autobiographies.

Fiction is a report from the interior.

They say that every writer, they write about himself, and I think that to a certain extent that is true. But also we are creators of fiction.

I can write with authority only about what I know well, which means that I end up using surface details of my own life in my fiction.

After I wrote my memoir, 'A Long Way Gone,' I was a bit exhausted. I didn't want to write another memoir; I felt that it might not be sane for one to speak about himself for many, many, many years in a row. At the same time, I felt the story of 'Radiance of Tomorrow' pulling at me because of the first book.

I certainly want to continue to write in a way that's intimate.

In many ways, I've been writing personal stories all my life.

We've always written from personal experiences.

Look, anything any writer writes is going to be on some level autobiographical. Part of the funny/sad thing is that you don't always know how autobiographical you're being.

Sometimes I'll write something that's purely autobiographical, and sometimes pure fiction, and sometimes a mix.

Every word is autobiographical, and every word is fiction.

When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about.

The question isn't, 'What do we want to know about people?', It's, 'What do people want to tell about themselves?'

There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.

When I lead essay workshops, I ask students to come up with at least five topics, which they'll narrow down to one. The winning idea should be the story the student is most excited to tell because it honestly reflects his or her best self.