Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

I don't quite operate within the realist mode. I kind of push the stories out towards the cusp of believability - that's the area of interest for me.

Sometimes when you tell a story, you reach a little bit too far just to make the story a better one.

What do you know? Haven't you heard of suspension of disbelief?

When I'm writing, I like to have a tiny bit of fact and then exaggerate it and turn it into something more people could relate to.

I talk about things that happened in my life. Now, do I embellish? Absolutely. Come on, we all do it. It makes for a better story. But it always comes from a germ of truth.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

I always say show me a storyteller who doesn't embellish, and I'll show you a bad one.

It's supposed to be entertainment. It's not supposed to be a documentary.

The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.

People say I make up wild stories. But all I have to do is write down stuff that really happens.

That's the trouble with a story spinner. You never know what's real and what's made up. Even when they are telling the truth, they can't stop themselves from spinning it into something better; something prettier, with more of a pattern to it.

Any fool can tell a story. Take a few odds and ends of things that happen to you, dress them up, shuffle them about, add a dash of excitement, a little color, and there you have it.

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

Sometimes I read a script and it's obvious from early on that it's one where the suspension of disbelief has to develop strongly from page one. Some are more reality-based.

'Harat' is actually - it's a Lebanese dialect word. It comes from 'the mapmaker,' somebody who makes a map. And it basically means somebody who tells fibs or exaggerate tales a little bit.

When you make movies based on real life, you try to exaggerate it.

I just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I'm living that story, and I don't give a thought to influences or method or any other writerly concerns.

The whole film genre is one of deceit. It is the suspension of disbelief. That's what all theater and all film is based on.

One of the questions writers bump up against in their work, whether they know it or not, is about lying. Because fiction is a form of deceit, and one's abilities are measured by how convincingly one can persuade readers that these events really happened.

A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone's written the story. He's supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment.

Apparently, I am a bit of an exaggerator when I tell stories. But I don't call them lies; I say they are better, funnier truths.

I have a longing for fiction, to try to believe in it and to disappear into it.

It never ceases to amaze me that readers who are willing to suspend their disbelief when it comes to the motivation of a vicious serial killer get high and mighty because I have put a coffee shop where there isn't one. Er... it's a novel. I made one up. I'm allowed to make stuff up. I'd go as far as to suggest that I make stuff up for a living.

The truth is always less interesting than the fiction.

We're telling a story. And the demands of that are different from the demands of a documentary. The audience must believe in order to keep faith in the story.