Walter Kirn Quotes

I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.

I've been falsely accused of drawing too much from real life. But I am a petty thief - I take little things. And, I mean, I can hardly write 10 words before I start to make things up. I start to invent, because that's what I want to do. I'm running away to an invented place.

I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.

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 sort of like writing about weird characters, I guess.

At a certain moment, I decided to write a story. I had no more small children to tell them stories.

I simply love writing good stories, that's my passion.

I love sitting at my desk and facing a quiet day with a pen in my hand, and putting myself into a story. It's kind of weird, isn't it? I mean, to absent myself from real life and make up stories is strange, but I started doing this when I was ten years old. It was all I wanted to do.

It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.

I simply love writing good stories; that's my passion.

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

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.

I take stuff from real life and try to make a character out of it. And I try to live the world of the characters a little bit.

I think I'm a born storyteller. Inspiration is all around me. I can read a newspaper article and come up with an idea for a book.

In real life, writers tend to be quite boring, but in our books, we're having exciting adventures all the time.

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

I just want to get on and tell stories.

I've sort of always been obsessed with telling stories and making things up.

A lot of things that I write about have happened to people around me, if not necessarily to me or in the organizations I've worked in. Having said that, it's fiction and has a lot to do with my imagination and creativity.

I do feel like that's what a writer does, is he goes into other people's heads.

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.

How much research I have to do depends on the nature of the story. For fantasy, none at all.

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.

Writing is more about imagination than anything else. I fell in love with words. I fell in love with storytelling.

Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.