Peter Handke Quotes

Sometimes I'm asked if I do research for my stories. The answer is yes and no. No, in the sense that I seldom plow through books at the library to gather material. Yes, in the sense that the first fifteen years of my life turned out to be one big research project.

After a summer trip to Switzerland, which was rich in experiences, I started writing. In the beginning, I aimed at descriptions of nature and folk life until, as the years passed, the description of man became my chief interest.

Every writer is going to end up drawing from their own experiences in one way or another.

I like to tell stories in my writing but I definitely use my own life experiences to tell that story.

I'll take a certain concern of my own or a situation and try to frame it around a fictional story, but sometimes just straight-up autobiographical songs work well, and sometimes a story is better. I like stories. I like to hear them. I don't think there are enough of them in songs anymore.

Whenever I'm writing a book, small details from my life always creep in.

Like most writers, I write about what has happened to me as that involves the minimum amount of research.

It's real easy for me to write a lot of stories. I just go and I live through something, and I go home and write about it. It's that quick.

I always like to write where I'm at in real life into whatever I'm working on.

Of course I write from experience, but I also do write from things that have happened in the world.

I think it's easier for me to write from experience.

I think I've written 40 books, and none of them have been heavy on action. I'm an introspective person.

I did not set out to write another novel. One day I sat down with the thought of trying my hand at a piece of nonfiction, a personal memoir of youth, but over the next several weeks, without intending it, the work began evolving into what has become 'Tomcat in Love.'

Everything can be grist for the muse. Sometimes, writers draw on personal experiences. 'Ghoul' was just that.

Nonfiction is more personal for me. It's more personal in that it's more direct, and actually it's always been more direct, even when I first started doing pieces.

Travel definitely affects me as a writer.

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.

If I ever wrote a book, people would never believe it.

When I really want to learn about something, I write a book on it. Then the real research begins, as I begin to hear people's stories, and huge amounts of information begins to comes straight to my doorstep. Then I can write an even better book the next time!

I started off doing fiction in 1993. It didn't occur to me to do nonfiction because it wasn't a thing yet. So I was bumbling around, writing short stories, and then I took a nonfiction workshop, and I realized that this was what I was supposed to do.

I was well traveled, and I created this illusion of literacy through reading and writing. I wrote a book of short stories.

My first novel, 'Sacrifice,' was set on the Shetland Islands.

Somebody said writing is easy, you just sit down at your typewriter and open a vein. It depends on the book. Some, I have to do quite a lot of research, which I like. Others are much closer to me.

I just sit down and the page just comes out and I look at it and the elements that appear on that page have a lot to do with what's going on in my life.

When I wrote The Onion Field, I realized that my first two novels were just practice.