Joseph Brodsky Quotes

There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.

I'm a magpie in my fiction, taking whatever looks shiny and curious to line the nest of my story.

Novelists have always had complete freedom to pretty much tell their story any way they saw fit. And that's what I'm trying to do.

A novel wouldn't be a book if there weren't some flights of fancy on the part of the author, stopping time to examine things, or to tell a joke.

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.

Most of the things in 'The Things They Carried' didn't happen to me. Ninety-five percent of it's invented. It's not what occurred.

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.

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.

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

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.

Fiction is a house with many stately mansions, but also one in which it is wise, at least sometimes, to swing from the chandeliers.

I think anything goes in fiction as long as it fits within the interior logic of the work itself and is presented in a disciplined manner.

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.

Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

Truth may be stranger than fiction on a plot and narrative basis, but fiction can investigate tone in a way that things based on a true story can't.

Though my stories aren't autobiographical, I do sometimes use things from my life.

Poetry, fiction as novels or short stories - these are autonomous as created by their authors. They should stand on their own, like pieces of furniture that should be judged as to their usefulness, elegance.

My major allegiance has been to storytelling, not to history.

Successful fiction does not need to be validated by 'real life'; I cringe whenever a writer is asked how much of a novel is 'real'.

I like going back and writing fiction.

Furthermore, even if ideas were gettable - say, stacked in a secluded cave like the Dead Sea scrolls - I wouldn't go there. An 'idea,' especially one adhered to from start to finish, can be disastrous for a compelling piece of fiction.

No matter how close to personal experience a story might be, inevitably you are going to get to a part that isn't yours and, actually, whether it happened or not becomes irrelevant. It is all about choosing the right words.

The novel has always been the form that incorporates other forms. For me, it has always been the ultimate medium.