Jorge Luis Borges Quotes

The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.

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

When I write for kids, I have to make sure they know what can't happen. They have to know it's a fantasy. But when I write for adults, they have to think it's real. Every detail has to be real or they won't buy it.

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.

Lest men suspect your tale untrue, Keep probability in view.

Fiction has to be plausible. All history has to do is happen.

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

I don't like something so fantasy-filled that I couldn't imagine it ever happening. I like things that could come true. That's how I conduct the show.

Everything that I can do to ground the story in reality helps make it harder for people to be dismissive of it.

They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, but there's such a thing as believability when you're writing a novel.

There is a rule for fantasy writers: The more truth you mix in with a lie, the stronger it gets.

I write fiction, there's no guarantee that what I say is truthful.

Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn't matter how "real" your story is, or how "made up": what matters is its necessity.

Mostly it's lies, writing novels. You set out to tell an untrue story and you try to make it believable, even to yourself. Which calls for details; any good lie does.

Obviously any fiction is going to be a combination of what is invented, what is overheard, what is experienced, what is experienced by people close to you, what you are told, what you have read, all mixed together into this kind of soup which, like any good soup, at the end you cannot really distinguish the ingredients.

Everything in a story should be credible.

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.

I'm writing for my ideal reader, for somebody who's willing to take the time, who's willing to get lost in a new world, who's willing to do their part. But then I have to do my part and give them a sound and a voice that they believe in enough to keep going.

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.

Overall, I adhere to the one guiding rule any author writing historical fiction should follow: whatever you describe has to be possible. It may not be common, obvious, or even all that probable, but it absolutely has to be possible.

All I ever wanted to do is to write stories that people will enjoy and feel at home with.

I don't mind UFO's and ghost stories, it's just that I tend to give value to the storyteller rather than to the story itself.

I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn't pay any attention at all. Sometimes it's me, or a composite of me and other people. Sometimes it's not me at all.

As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.

It's really about, oh come on, this guy wouldn't say that or he wouldn't do that, you know, it's about the characters, about the story, about the situation.