Andrew Jarecki Quotes

I create fictional narratives, but it's based on literal people.

English fiction was something I loved growing up, and it changed my life - it changed the trajectory of my life.

Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.

My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head.

I tend to wait for true stories to mature into fiction. Most of my fiction grew out of a long-germinating real-life situation.

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

In fiction, you have a rough idea what's coming up next - sometimes you even make a little outline - but in fact you don't know. Each day is a whole new - and for me, a very invigorating - experience.

I can create countries just as I can create the actions of my characters. That is why a lot of travel seems to me a waste of time.

All of my novels are seeded in real life events, and 'The Wreckage' is no different.

I tell stories. I kind of stumbled on that by trying to combine Jane Austen and magic.

The stories tend to be what I work on when I'm stuck. Something will just pop into my head and I'll think that's more of a story.

When you're in elementary school, you get these amazing assignments, like to come up with your own animal, come up with your own city, come up with your own planet, what do the people look like; you're very much encouraged to be as imaginative as possible.

Telling ourselves that fiction is in a sense true and at the same time not true is essential to the art of fiction. It's been at the heart of fiction from the start. Fiction offers both truth, and we know it's a flat-out lie. Sometimes it drives a novelist mad. Sometimes it energizes us.

I've never been comfortable with the idea of using family and friends in stories. Which is why it takes me longer than something else. Because you make them up out of nothing. Doing that is harder.

What do you do in a novel? You take recognizable characters from your own life, and you fantasize about what they're really like.

A work of fiction is conceived very much the same way as a dream occurs in the mind of a sleeper. But a lot of it is imagination. It's not based on real people.

I began writing fictional stories and little screenplays when I was in fifth grade.

I've lost much of my heart and the spark or fire that once 'created,' or produced, the art of fiction.

I often have trouble falling asleep at night, so when I'm lying in bed I think up stories. That's where I do a lot of my thinking. I also get a lot of ideas while I'm reading - sometimes reading someone else's stories will make me think of one of my own.

I don't know that any writing comes easily, but I certainly get more immersed in novels. I don't think the routine is any different, but fiction tends to pull me further away from my life. When I'm deep in a novel, I don't pay bills and I walk around in one shoe, drinking two-day old coffee, and calling my kids by the wrong names.

Ultimately, in my mind, that's what I'm trying to do with my fiction; I'm trying to transport my reader into a different world.

I wrote a novel. It's called 'The Middlesteins.' It's fiction. It's not a memoir. I'm not a spokesperson.

People have always heard voices. Sometimes they're called shamans, sometimes they're called mad, and sometimes they're called fiction writers. I always feel lucky that I live in a culture where fiction writing is legal and not seen as pathology.

I feel as if someone is going to come along, feel my collar and say: 'Do you really think you can get people to read books you've made up about people that don't exist?'

While I was in high school, I discovered and began writing science fiction.