Walter Mosley Quotes

Lost Illusion is the undisclosed title of every novel.

I feel like we've found an interesting little corner of the sandbox here as far as the way we're telling sci-fi stories. I don't think it's limited to sci-fi - I think anything fantastic can co-exist with people you and I know, and not these hyper-real movie people.

'Lagoon' is an ambitious novel.

What is either a picture or a novel that is not character?

In fact, people seem to be tired of fiction now. There are so many other ways of exploring humanity - by ethnology, psychoanalysis, and so on. It's a little boring to make up stories. So many people think that it's better to be very close to reality and to recount one's life as it is rather than to fictionalize, as they say, that is to transpose, and therefore to cheat.

A short story is the shortest distance between two points; a novel is the scenic route.

A novel is not a rant.

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

When reading fiction, we cannot automatically assume that what we read is fact.

A novel should tell a story, be a pleasure to read, and at the same time it should be thought-provoking, even a bit instructive.

'Flaubert's Parrot' is an amphibious book in which what appears to be a personal essay about Flaubertian writing is gradually, delicately transformed into an extremely sad novel in which the differences between character, author, and narrator are less clear than they appear at first glance.

Nonfiction, to me, feels like an argument, whereas a novel is like a series of questions.

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.

Writers don't write about people they know. They write what they know about people.

A novel is both a story and a piece of writing. A movie is a story and a piece of filmmaking.

Stories work better when not everyone gets what they want.

I love to read, and TV seemed more like a good book, with these incredible series unfolding like chapters in a novel.

The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.

I think both you and I, we live in a world of fiction and stories.

I'm a novelist at heart. My sole intention is to write the best novel possible. I don't think about the film potential at all.

Sometimes journalists ask me, "What's the message?" There is no message. I think that fiction should not be trying to give messages. Just tell a story.

Life is not like a novel, but a novel can be like life. The best ones always are.

As I keep saying, fiction is truth. I think fiction is the truest thing there ever was.

Memory and the imagination are almost identical. It's the same place in the brain and the same thing is happening. When you think about your own life, there are no memories without place. You are always situated somewhere. I think the imagination - the narrative imagination at least - situates you in a specific space when you start to think of a story. I often use places I know. I put my characters inside rooms and houses that I'm familiar with - sometimes the houses of my parents or grandparents or previous apartments I've lived in.

There is a set of balances and rhythms to a novel that we can't experience in real life. So I think there is a sense in which fiction can rescue history from confusion.