Jami Attenberg Quotes

It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all becomes fiction as soon as you write it down.

I'm trying to move a little more toward literary fiction while still retaining a popular feel.

But basically, I'm trying to write a fun story.

I would like to write a book that wasn't so violent and weird, but I just don't think I can do that with my talent. I don't think it would come off.

I would never make up a character who didn't exist or an event that didn't transpire. If you're a real writer, you have other tools in your toolbox to build drama.

I want prose fiction to be recognized as that, and I'm not interested in writing as it becomes more personal.

Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.

I like novelists who can create other interesting worlds.

I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it's such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction.

My temperament is not geared to that of a novelist.

I think it's Jerry's masterful fiction writing.

I tell stories. I kind of stumbled on that by trying to combine Jane Austen and magic.

I don't like to use writing assignments, exercises. I think too often people get comfortable writing in that vein, but you can't go on to write a novel comprised of short writing exercises.

Writing fiction, I really just sit there and it just comes.

Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything.

I don't read much nonfiction because the nonfiction I do read always seems to be so badly written. What I enjoy about fiction - the great gift of fiction - is that it gives language an opportunity to happen.

I write contemporary fiction, and that is what my readers want to read.

I have always loved short stories. I have been at least as influenced by the short story masters as I have been by novelists.

I'm a fiction writer, and fiction is telling the lives of unreal people. But the only way you can learn to do that well is by really understanding the lives of real people.

I am really excited by the form of short fiction.

I suppose I reached the limit of what I could do with nonfiction books, perhaps because they never felt quite intense enough - it's a journalistic enterprise, ultimately, even if you are using the memoir as a form.

I suppose writing nonfiction did prepare me for writing fiction. Whenever you write anything, you're honing your skills for writing anything else.

So much emotion goes into writing fiction.

My fictitious characters will take the bit between their teeth and gallop off and do something that I hadn't counted on. However, I always insist on dragging them back to the straight and narrow.

As a fiction writer, my favorite tools are my imagination and the peculiar opportunities offered by different points of view.