Thorne Smith Quotes

When I am writing anything in general, I just want to tell the story that exists in my head; I don't try to write a parable or make a point.

I love telling stories. Creating a character, a world, a whole universe out of nothing. That part I can't get enough of.

I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.

I just want to make stories. They don't have to have a moral or a reason. There might be some mild cautionary notes, but they're not moral. They don't impart any Judeo-Christian ethic of any kind.

I've been writing stories since I was a kid. I love writing stories.

Novels are so interior and idiosyncratic and such a solitary process.

When you do fiction, it is your imagination you have put out there.

Writing is so fun precisely because if you take out the right adjective, the readers can decide what kind of book is in their hands. Suspension of disbelief should not be mandatory in contemporary writing.

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

Our task as fiction writers isn't just to report something that didn't really happen. We have to give what we write a sense of reality. The tool of our tradition is language.

When I give myself over to a good novel, I surrender to the truths fashioned from one writer's heart, mind and soul. I do not waste a nanosecond wondering whether what I'm reading 'really happened.'

I love 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' but in some ways I think 'The Lake of Dreams' is a stronger book. I was able to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's all you can ever do as a writer. From there on you have no control over it.

Getting to share the stories in my head with other people and have them enjoy those stories, and having them come to see my characters as real. That's so cool.

Basically, I just write whatever story grabs me rather than considering the genre.

Novels give you the opportunity to create a whole world. Because you create people, you make them talk... You decide who they are, whether they live or die. It's the closest thing to feeling like a god that you can come to.

It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore.

I've written fiction for as long as I can remember; it's always been my preferred form of play.

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!

I see the role of the writer as creating a room with big windows and leaving the reader to imagine. It's a meeting on the page.

In journalism I can only tell what happened. In fiction, I can show it.

I love stories. I just enjoy telling stories and watching what these characters do - although writing continues to be just as hard as it always was.

Writing is writing to me. I'm incapable of saying no to any writing job, so I've done everything - historical fiction, myths, fairy tales, anything that anybody expresses any interest in me writing, I'll write. It's the same reason I used to read as a child: I like going somewhere else and being someone else.

It's all about letting the story take over.