Michael Hirst Quotes

I never fantasized or invented a thing, not one thing. I knew every single thing I ever wrote about.

I'm not writing fairy tales or object lessons.

A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.

I've been falsely accused of drawing too much from real life. But I am a petty thief - I take little things. And, I mean, I can hardly write 10 words before I start to make things up. I start to invent, because that's what I want to do. I'm running away to an invented place.

I like to know the places I write about. I feel like it helps me ground the novel. My novels are 'realistic novels,' but they can also be fantastical, so it's nice to have a setting that grounds them a little bit.

Basically, I just write whatever story grabs me rather than considering the genre.

The fact is, for all the critics' talk about me as a realist, I'm making everything up - everything. It is all about imagining with me.

Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.

The essayist has to follow a certain intellectual pattern. The novelist has the advantage of using fantasy, of being subjective.

All of my novels are seeded in real life events, and 'The Wreckage' is no different.

A few people have tried to make me see that my writing isn't quite their thing by saying to me: 'What about realism?' To which my general response is, 'What about it?' However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of my favorite writers, Marilynne Robinson, was to say something similar if asked 'What about the fantastic?'

A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places.

The stories I write are often literal to events that have happened or observations that I've made, and sometimes they're fantastical.

Fiction lags after truth.

Story and plot, not historical facts, are the engine of a novel, but I was committed to working through the grain of actual history and coming to something, an overall effect, which approximated truth.

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

I've always loved massive worlds, whether in fantasy or science fiction. I like the idea of making my own rules as well as utilizing everything that I love or inspires me. It's very freeing to know you can write a story that can be as big as your own imagination.

I don't have anything to prove as a writer anymore. I write about Panera Bread or Red Lobster or Satan or Richard Ramirez or whatever comes to mind. I just write.

You have so many sources to draw on when you're a fantasy writer.

fiction is founded on truth....unless things did happen,people couldn't think of them.

Good fiction creates its own reality.

From Shakespeare to Robi Thakur, everyone has written stories about people and incidents around them. There is no creativity minus reality irrespective of how flowery or abstract you make it.

I never set out to write literature; I set out to tell stories. And some of my work may be very raunchy and very bloodthirsty - but life, for me, is a violent thing.

A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.

I'll take a certain concern of my own or a situation and try to frame it around a fictional story, but sometimes just straight-up autobiographical songs work well, and sometimes a story is better. I like stories. I like to hear them. I don't think there are enough of them in songs anymore.