Peter Hedges Quotes

If they aren't real enough to surprise me, then they aren't real enough to go on the page.

I'm a novelist first, and I wrote a bunch of books, and everything I write, I just find people are more interesting when there's an element of humor to it.

I've still got lots of writing in me. I have not left journalism, but I put it on hold to focus on acting. I love actors. I think it's a crazy thing to do with your life, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for them.

I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.

I've tried to write deep and serious. I spent years working to write a story that would make my writing group cry.

I started out wanting to be an actor and I like to give actors as much as possible. I love writing stuff where they can really lose control.

I love novels, but I'm not a novelist. I'm just a dramatist, which means I write lines for actors. That's all I have ever wanted to do.

Storytelling is my passion, and it rises from a love of reading.

When you are a novelist, you are used to making a narrative do what you want.

When you write fiction, you can sort of invent more but also pack it with emotions that are very pertinent to you. Whereas with nonfiction, you have to be as factual as possible but also hopefully - also bring... emotional relevance to the piece.

The idea that an author can extricate her or his own ongoing life experience from the tale being written is a conceit of very little worth.

When I do my best work, the stories tend to be pretty emotionally-charged.

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over world-building.

If I just sit here, what am I going to do? I don't have a trade. I don't teach or anything. I just love to make up characters and gradually build a story around them.

Now, as a writer, the whole world is your nail polish display, and what's more, you can help yourself. A thrilling, colourful array of gorgeous human peculiarity revolves before your eyes, and you still can't quite believe it's all yours for the taking.

As far as the creative side, the more I do this, the more I know that it's all about the writing. We don't always celebrate that enough, but without the writing, you can't do much. You got on a film sometimes, and it's sort of half-written, and they expect and think that the actor's job is to bring the extra part and the good part. It's not.

We all want to write the kind of book that we want to read. If you put in the things that you are thinking about and create characters who feel like they could live - at least for me, that's the way I want to write.

There's nothing more thrilling than watching great actors say things that you wrote and bring them to life.

I love doing the nighttime soap, the emotional, psychological, hard stuff that I got to tackle on 'Hannibal.'

To me, great writing - and when you can really make something wonderful out of it as an actor - is when your character has a sense of self-awareness. It doesn't necessarily have to arc. It doesn't have to grow.

I have always enjoyed literature classes, and I took a fiction workshop for writing and analyzing at Curtis... I don't know if would do it professionally, but it's nice to have the balance with the music.

I think that, as a writer, while it's your job to construct stories, you have to navigate your way through them with your heart.

Good actors can tell you more about your play than 1,000 hours alone at your desk.

Make them do as you want them to," she said. "I can’t," mourned Anne. "Averil is such an unmanageable heroine. She will do and say things I never meant her to. Then that spoils everything that went before and I have to write it all over again.

A writer can't just be well-educated or good at research; to build a living, breathing world with interesting characters, you have to write from the gut. I'm not saying you have to live your life like a fantasy adventure. The trick is the ability to synthesize your own everyday experiences into your fiction. Infuse your characters with believable emotions and motivations. Infuse your world with rich sensory detail. For that you have to be in touch with your own existence and your own soul, the dark and the light of it.