Elif Safak Quotes

I think, what's the point of writing a book that you would get in one sitting?

I'm writing exactly the kinds of books I like to write. And they're the kinds of books I like to read. They're popular commercial fiction. That's what they are.

I just try to write the best story I can, a story I would love to read, and hope that readers feel the same.

All I can guess is that when I write, I forget that it's not real. I'm living the story, and I think people can read that sincerity about the characters. They are real to me while I'm writing them, and I think that makes them real to the readers as well.

When I write fiction, I never try to deliver a message; I just want to tell a story. But I admit that I want the story to be memorable and the characters to touch the reader's heart.

If there are 100 people, I don't anticipate all 100 liking my scenario - but I write it so at least one or two of them will love and get really into that particular story.

A novel is not a play. A novel takes one reader at a time into its confidence. It can be shockingly personal. Private, even.

I am generally wary of the demand for 'likeability' in fiction, which I think is a bastardisation of the demand of identification - itself something of a suspect notion.

Writing a book for me, I expect, is very similar to the experience of reading the book for my readers.

One of the things that I tell beginning writers is this: If you describe a landscape, or a cityscape, or a seascape, always be sure to put a human figure somewhere in the scene. Why? Because readers are human beings, mostly interested in human beings. People are humanists. Most of them are humanists, that is.

I just want to tell a good story, so I always ask myself, 'Are these people real to me?'

I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.

The novelist in me is probably hiding behind all the stories I write, looking for ways to connect them and continue the conversation with readers. Maybe I'm writing one long narrative, and each book, however different from the last, is just a chapter.

I think one of the paradoxes of writing fiction is when people enjoy it, they want it to be real. So they look for connections.

It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.

One of the things that writing has taught me is that fiction has a life of its own. Fictional places are sometimes more real than the view from our bedroom window. Fictional people can sometimes become as close to us as our loved ones.

In writing literary fiction, you are trying to help yourself. And readers are going to literary fiction not just to be entertained, but because they feel something else will happen; that the experience will take them beyond themselves and show them something they haven't seen before.

When people read a novel 600 pages long, six months pass, and all they will remember are five pages. They don't remember the text - instead, they remember the sensations the text gives them.

I'm always sorry to finish a book, to let go of characters I love, people I've struggled to understand for years, people who evolve before me.

You can't visit readers where you think they are. You have to invite them home to where you are and try to lure them into your universe. That's the art of storytelling.

I can only try to keep the characters interesting; it's up to the readers to decide whether they're still relevant.

I'd read one too many crime novels where the victim was just a name: body number one, dead woman number 12. I understood fear, and I wanted to create characters who made readers say, 'Please, don't hurt this guy.' That's the key to suspense. It's easy to disgust a reader. It's much harder to make them care.

Well, for people who want to write best sellers, the best advice I can give is to say that the novel has to engage the reader emotionally.

Every story makes a promise to the reader. Actually, two promises, one emotional and one intellectual, since the function of stories is to make us both feel and think.

If the characters are compelling, readers will follow anywhere.