Sherman Alexie Quotes

Everything in a story should be credible.

The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.

I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn't pay any attention at all. Sometimes it's me, or a composite of me and other people. Sometimes it's not me at all.

Lest men suspect your tale untrue, Keep probability in view.

Fiction has to be plausible. All history has to do is happen.

Everything that I can do to ground the story in reality helps make it harder for people to be dismissive of it.

They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, but there's such a thing as believability when you're writing a novel.

Real life doesn't have to be convincing, but fiction does.

Fiction intended to please, should resemble truth as much as possible.

All stories are true,” Skarpi said. “But this one really happened, if that’s what you mean.” He took another slow drink, then smiled again, his bright eyes dancing. “More or less. You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way. Too much truth confuses the facts. Too much honesty makes you sound insincere.

All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened.

Ironically, in today's marketplace successful nonfiction has to be unbelievable, while successful fiction must be believable.

All stories should have some honesty and truth in them, otherwise you're just playing about.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

Tricks you need to transform something which appears fantastic, unbelievable into something plausible, credible, those I learned from journalism. The key is to tell it straight. It is done by reporters and by country folk.

When a writer is already stretching the bounds of reality by writing within a science fiction or fantasy setting, that writer must realize that excessive coincidence makes the fictional reality the writer is creating less 'real.'

Verisimilitude is something I am constantly seeking in fiction. I am looking for surface detail that makes something seem real.

I don't quite operate within the realist mode. I kind of push the stories out towards the cusp of believability - that's the area of interest for me.

People say I make up wild stories. But all I have to do is write down stuff that really happens.

Matter-of-fact descriptions make the improbable seem real.

Among its many other obligations, fiction always has to be believable. Life does not have to suffer such constraint, and much of what takes place is believable only because it happens.

What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.

My action follows my characters. If a character is a cop, you cannot be posing all the time, you cannot fly off the roof because it doesn't make any sense - it's not practical.

When guys do books or stories, all I like to see is the truth.

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.