Jon Ronson Quotes

The writer of stories or of novels settles on men and imitates them; he exhausts the possibilities of his characters.

I do not make stories up, full stop.

Writing is possibly an art, but crime writing is definitely a craft.

All fiction has to have a certain amount of truth in it to be powerful.

Nonfiction means that our stories are as true and accurate as possible. Readers expect - demand - diligence.

A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

I thought at first that I might write mysteries, but then I said, 'Mysteries have plots, and I'm not sure I can do that yet.'

My books aren't autobiographical.

The only way, I think, to learn to write short stories is to write them, and then try to discover what you have done.

The first lie of fiction is that the author gives some order to the chaos of life: chronological order, or whatever order the author chooses.

I think that's because believable action is based on authenticity, and accuracy is very important to me. I always spend time researching my novels, exploring the customs and attitudes of the county I'm using for their setting.

I think the most important thing when you're telling a story is to just tell the story as best as you possibly can.

I would like to write a book that wasn't so violent and weird, but I just don't think I can do that with my talent. I don't think it would come off.

I write short stories. I write every day.

Whether the story reflects the facts is obviously a different matter.

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.

Stephen King has inspired me with his humor and honesty, and his admonition that the author's job is to tell the truth.

I would never make up a character who didn't exist or an event that didn't transpire. If you're a real writer, you have other tools in your toolbox to build drama.

All fiction relies on the real world in the sense that we all take in the world through our five senses and we accumulate details, consciously or subconsciously. This accumulation of detail can be drawn on when you write fiction.

I don't believe a poet has a better hold on truth or morality than a fiction writer has. And I don't think a fiction writer has anything over a journalist. It's all about the good word, properly inserted.

I like the eclipses, the synaptic jumps of short stories. The reader has to participate very actively in the experience.

When I tell people there are three stories in 'Thunderstruck' that were from the same wrecked novel, they want to guess what they are. Nobody has. There are no characters or timelines in common. They're structured very differently. A good novel wouldn't have pulled apart so easily.

I'm not very good at creating worlds. I prefer to write about the world as it is.

Quite often, little germs of ideas have come from something that I've observed or someone's told me. The process of it becoming fiction is expanding and extending it: stretching the rubber band of reality.

I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There's not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on.