Mark Billingham Quotes

When you do fiction, it is your imagination you have put out there.

A work of fiction is conceived very much the same way as a dream occurs in the mind of a sleeper. But a lot of it is imagination. It's not based on real people.

I suppose I'm pulled towards fiction because I really like the freedom it gives me.

Every now and then I'll do little things, a short story or something, that doesn't have any fantastical elements, but mostly I like the power of playing God and I like to imagine things.

Sometimes I read a script and it's obvious from early on that it's one where the suspension of disbelief has to develop strongly from page one. Some are more reality-based.

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.

I like going back and writing fiction.

The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up.

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

A lot of my books have started with an abstract premise.

To me, there is nothing higher than fiction. Nothing. It is fundamentally who I am. I am a teller of stories. For me, that's the only way I can make sense of the world, with all the dance that it involves.

As a writer of fiction, you don't ever want to limit the characters you create to the life you've lived. That's insanity to me.

Like all novelists, I'm interested in the filters between reality and the imagination.

Authors make stuff up. Let's not pretend it's any more magical than that.

As writers, our job is to try to create, in a fake space, something that feels true. That's just straight-up fiction: Invent a character that doesn't exist; make them seem like they do.

I think one of the battles for fiction writers is how much to invent or exaggerate.

The more fiction you read and write, the more you'll find your paragraphs forming on their own.

How much research I have to do depends on the nature of the story. For fantasy, none at all.

People ask me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research.

A great danger, or at least a great temptation, for many writers is to become too autobiographical in their approach to their fiction. A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.

From my years of teaching creative writing, I know that new writers take the setting for granted, as simply a place to set the action, but setting is a vital element in fiction writing and deserves serious treatment.

I was about 28-29 when I wrote my first story, and that was called 'The Garden of Abdul Gasazi.'

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

Quite often, little germs of ideas have come from something that I've observed or someone's told me. The process of it becoming fiction is expanding and extending it: stretching the rubber band of reality.

While writing a novel, I don't read anything new in fiction. I am too engrossed.