Ryan Coogler Quotes

Take it from me: I really love making things up, which is why I write fiction for a living.

I began writing fictional stories and little screenplays when I was in fifth grade.

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.

I had been a reporter for 15 years when I set out to write my first novel. I knew how to research an article or profile a subject - skills that I assumed would be useless when it came to fiction. It was from my imagination that the characters in my story would emerge.

Being a novelist, you can roam around with a story and indulge yourself.

I fundamentally believe that no one can teach you how to write - finding out how to write a story is part of the process of creating a story - but you can really learn through exposure to different writing, to different art forms, to different modes of storytelling, and with mentors who are able to get you to step outside your comfort zone.

I started writing by doing small related things but not the thing itself, circling it and getting closer. I had no idea how to write fiction. So I did journalism because there were rules I could learn. You can teach someone to write a news story. They might not write a great one, but you can teach that pretty easily.

To be a dramatic writer takes hard work, talent, and discipline. And that's why I just make up crap.

The one thing emphasized in any creative writing course is 'write what you know,' and that automatically drives a wooden stake through the heart of imagination. If they really understood the mysterious process of creating fiction, they would say, 'You can write about anything you can imagine.'

I write novels and other things.

The characters emerge from my rather twisted mind. That's another enjoyable part of the job making stuff up.

Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories.

I am never not thinking about stories. 'The Bone Season' is 90% of my brain - 10% is interacting with the rest of the world.

I think every fiction writer, to a certain extent, is a schizophrenic and able to have two or three or five voices in his or her body. We seek, through our profession, to get those voices onto paper.

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

I love sitting at my desk and facing a quiet day with a pen in my hand, and putting myself into a story. It's kind of weird, isn't it? I mean, to absent myself from real life and make up stories is strange, but I started doing this when I was ten years old. It was all I wanted to do.

As long as you have ideas, you can keep going. That's why writing fiction is so much fun: because you're moving people about, and making settings for them to move in, so there's always something there to keep working on.

I have some other novels I want to write. I have a lot of short stories - I love the short story.

I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.

I love to tell stories and this is my way of getting them down on paper.

I like going back and writing fiction.

My temperament is not geared to that of a novelist.

When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.

While I was in high school, I discovered and began writing science fiction.

When I was in my late twenties, a friend suggested that, since I was an avid SF reader and had been since I was barely a teenager, that since it didn't look like the poetry was going where I wanted, I might try writing a science fiction story. I did, and the first story I ever wrote was 'The Great American Economy.'