Natalie Clifford Barney Quotes

I feel like my brain is more geared towards a novel than it is to a movie.

I don't care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

Writers can take offense when someone asks what's real or autobiographical in our work because, to us, that's not what counts. The bits taken from life are tiny scales on the dragon's tail - what about that whole beautiful writhing, fire-breathing dragon?

Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things.

Fiction can either be a mirror reflecting you back to yourself or it can be a clean pane of glass looking on the outside.

I know it may sound silly, but I think my short stories have a life and identity of their own. They crop up in all sorts of places.

I'm always saying that my books are not autobiographical because they're not. I can't choose any one scene and say, 'Oh, this is exactly what happened to me!' I just use little snippets of things as a starting point!

Sometimes my lyrics may describe a situation that happened to a friend. Other times, I create a story from the ground up.

Novels will remain my meat and potatoes, what sustain me imaginatively.

Fiction will always be my greatest love, with poetry close behind.

Fiction is socially meaningful.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I'm still awake. I can continue yesterday's dream today, something you can't normally do in everyday life.

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.

It is as true for the writer as for the reader that any novel worth its ink should be an experience first and foremost - not an essay, not a statement, not an orderly rollout of themes and propositions.

I am a story teller and I take each story very seriously.

As a writer of fiction, lying is the central thing to all books.

I'm a fan of creative writing and telling stories.

Fiction is organized gossip.

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.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

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

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.

My novels are certainly more exciting than my own life.

To tell a good story and to illuminate the world: the two things are completely linked. That is the point. That is what I've always wanted to do.