Arthur Golden Quotes

Everything in a story should be credible.

My action follows my characters. If a character is a cop, you cannot be posing all the time, you cannot fly off the roof because it doesn't make any sense - it's not practical.

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.

The truth has got to appear plausible on the stage.

I don't want to play myself up as a hero, because it would make me unbelievable. I'd rather settle for people thinking that I'm a bum, but digging my stories, than liking me and not being able to believe in my stories. That's one reason I've been hard on myself, because I want my stuff to be believable.

Verisimilitude is something I am constantly seeking in fiction. I am looking for surface detail that makes something seem real.

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.

You have to suspend disbelief a little bit to buy into your situation and to the story and to how the character will react. You have to tweak your credibility a little bit, is basically what it comes down to.

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

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

I've been in so many writing workshops where someone hands in a story, and when the other writers in the workshop are giving feedback, they say, 'This is unbelievable.' And the writer says, 'Well, actually, the events are based in real life. This actually happened.'

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

To me, fantasy should be as real as possible. I don't buy into the notion that because it's fantastic, it should be unrealistic, because I think you have to have a sense of believing the world that you're going into.

Reality is not always probable, or likely. But if you're writing a story, you have to make it as plausible as you can, because if not, the reader's imagination will reject it.

The story she had told me was possible, but it was not believable.

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

If it's fiction, then it better be true.

Fiction intended to please, should resemble truth as much as possible.

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

If you've a story, make sure it's a whole one, with details close to hand. It's the difference between a good lie and getting caught.

Real life doesn't have to be convincing, but fiction does.

I hear people talk in my head and I write it down. I choose where they live and how they dress to be real. That person wouldn't wear that. That person wouldn't say that. She can't afford to live like that. All that bullshit that so many movies have in them. I don't want to see that.

Any lie should be as close to the truth as possible.

If you tell a lie, always rehearse it. If it don't sound good to you, it won't sound good to anybody.

A touch of truth makes a lie worth believing.