Clive Barker Quotes

First of all, writing at best - certainly fiction writing - more and more I think is magic.

Most of my short stories are fantasy.

Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds.

When I was little, I made up my own fairy tales, and the ghostly echo of 'Once upon a time' shapes all the fiction I've ever written.

Anyone who has set out to invent a purely imaginary story knows that the whole thing is fantasy, from beginning to end; there must be a sense of magic created about the most restrained of naturalism.

I love the magic of stories and the power of stories.

Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things.

I used to tell strange, wild, improbable tales akin to ghost stories, and discovered a taste for spinning yarns.

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 like fantasy.

I just went and got an agent because I thought I can create my own world - you can't right your own life, but you can escape to a world where you can have control.

It's the imagination that is involved in sci-fi, and fantasy is what draws me to it. Stories, everything.

I've never turned into a bee - I've never been chased by a mummy or met a ghost. But many of the ideas in my books are suggested by real life.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

I make it all up, and all of it is true.

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.

If a fantasy, if a story can help you feel something, I think that's really cool.

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

When I'm writing books, something weird happens; and the result is the books contain a large amount of what you could call 'supernaturalism.' As a writer, I find I need that to explain the world I'm writing about.

Fiction allows us to both evade truth and to approach it - or, rather, it's fiction that allows us to 'construct' our world. It's haunted by the unimaginable and the unspeakable.

It's not magic that takes us to another world - it's storytelling.

Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction.

I don't think I wrote stories down when I was young, but I certainly made them up, perhaps sometimes losing track of the border between reality and make-believe.

Kids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.'

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.