Roxane Gay Quotes

Writing is more about imagination than anything else. I fell in love with words. I fell in love with storytelling.

My childhood was surrounded by books and writing. From a very early age I was fascinated by storytelling, by the printed word, by language, by ideas. So I would seek them out.

I like the challenge of creating a world with only sentences.

I think that one of the things you have to do to become a storyteller is spend a lot of time reading stories.

How many times can you put together 26 different stories without running out?

I always had stories inside my head and one day I just decided to start writing them down. I didn't actually decide.

You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.

I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you're trying to be a writer because it's the only apprenticeship we have, it's the only way of learning how to write a story.

I don't think I'm essentially interested in children's books. I'm interested in writing, and in pictures. I'm interested in people and in children because they are people.

There is a rule for fantasy writers: The more truth you mix in with a lie, the stronger it gets.

As such, anything is always possible, even if your protagonist is a plumber. But it's the possibility, the limitless possibilities, of any fake life, that make writing about it so challenging.

Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake.

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.

I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

You don't have to go fight bulls in Spain like Hemingway to write something great, or go off to war. It's right under your nose.

Fantasy is fantasy. It's fiction. It's not meant to be a textbook. I don't believe in letting research overwhelm the fiction. That's a danger of science fiction in particular, as opposed to fantasy. A lot of writers forget that what they're doing is supposed to be art.

I write and I read, and I write and read my way into and out of ideas and life. And that's what we do. That's what storytellers do.

Literature has always been the greatest fuel for my imagination.

I was always someone who wanted to write. I was a real shy, bookworm-ish kid, and I think my earliest stuff was fairly dark.

Good novel is a conjunction of many factors, the main of which is, without a doubt, hard work. There are many things behind a good novel, but in particular, there is a lot of work - a lot of patience, a lot of stubbornness, and a critical spirit.

You hear many things, take a little from each experience, and tune your imagination to create believable characters and situations.

Fairy tales and folk tales are part of the DNA of all stories and great fun to write.

Fiction makes your dreams come true, and, as a writer, fiction allows you to delve into the area of miracles.

After putting the kids to bed, I would think about what I wanted to write.

Learned to read, and for a while as a kid, you think books are just leaves on trees. Then suddenly, you think a human being is making that, and maybe you could do that.