E. L. Doctorow Quotes

There's no division on my bookshelf between fiction and nonfiction. As far as I'm concerned, fiction is about the truth.

Well, I suppose I'm interested in ways of storytelling and in stories that are about storytelling.

I never really considered writing something that was nonfiction.

Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?

Most books aren't pure nonfiction or fiction.

In Bosnian, there's no distinction in literature between fiction and nonfiction; there's no word describing that.

Both types of books - fiction and nonfiction - are a search for story. As a writer and a reader, there's nothing I crave more than a good story!

True stories are way more interesting.

In my mind, there's not a great difference between what people call fiction and non-fiction. So in that sense, I'm like an early-18th-century person. I actually believe there's one way of writing.

Nonfiction, to me, feels like an argument, whereas a novel is like a series of questions.

The difference between fiction and nonfiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable.

Fiction is a house with many stately mansions, but also one in which it is wise, at least sometimes, to swing from the chandeliers.

You have only so many chances to tell stories. I didn't want to be forever wedded to one form of storytelling when there are so many out there.

All that non-fiction can do is answer questions. It's fiction's business to ask them.

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.

I like writing historical fiction.

Fiction is a lie that is told in the service of truth.

Cut quarrels out of literature, and you will have very little history or drama or fiction or epic poetry left.

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

Fiction isn't memoir and memoir isn't fiction.

Most of the things in 'The Things They Carried' didn't happen to me. Ninety-five percent of it's invented. It's not what occurred.

In any genre you're working in, you can always find a way to tell a particular kind of story. I love fantasy; I love science fiction. I love all kinds of fiction, in fact.

The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers.

Whether it's fiction or nonfiction, writing takes me to another world.

Fiction is lies; we're writing about people who never existed and events that never happened when we write fiction, whether its science fiction or fantasy or western mystery stories or so-called literary stories. All those things are essentially untrue. But it has to have a truth at the core of it.