David Baker Quotes

I remember that the day I finished 'The Angels,' part three of 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting', I was terribly proud of myself. I was sure that I had discovered the key to a new way of putting together a narrative.

I think the short story is a very underrated art form. We know that novels deserve respect.

I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.

The novel has always been the form that incorporates other forms. For me, it has always been the ultimate medium.

In general, my own experience of writing an adaptation of 'Evening' gave me a chance to get into different parts of the book.

Granted there are only seven stories in the universe. And I agree with that. But give me a great variation of those stories. And literate.

Certainly 'The Judgment of Paris' was the novel in which I found my own voice.

I suspect there are two kinds of novelists. Those who have a point of view and have something to say and then write a novel in order to say that thing, and those of us who write the book in order to find out what we think about that thing.

A short story is a shard, a sliver, a vignette. It's a biopsy on the human condition but it doesn't have this capacity to think autonomously for itself.

Every now and then I'll do little things, a short story or something, that doesn't have any fantastical elements, but mostly I like the power of playing God and I like to imagine things.

There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.

Since I grew up, I have never deliberately used any technique at all other than the physical shaping of my tale so that it more or less resembles what has been thought of as a novel for these last two hundred years.

I've never written poetry. I'm not a poet, but I think the nearest you get is either the short story or the novella, in that you can't waste a word. There is no hiding place: everything's got to be seen to relate, and the prose counts.

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

As a writer, my only responsibility is to tell a compelling story.

I think it's a short story writer's duty, as well as writing well about emotions and characters, to write story.

I used to say, read as much as you can. Now I say, read the best that you can, the stories that resonate with you, the books that are important to you. Try to read, not only as a reader, but also as a writer, to deconstruct how the author is telling his or her story.

I see every book as a problem that you have to solve. That is what dictates the form you use. It's not that you say, 'I want to write a science fiction book.' You start from the other end, and what you have to say dictates the form of it.

I'm just interested in serialization in fiction. I'm fascinated by it. I love the 19th-century novels. I'm interested in ways to bring that back to fiction.

In terms of fiction, I'd rather go out and have a good time than read a book about someone having a good or bad time.

I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist.

Writers cannot simply have a go, imagining it's easier to produce a story than a novel because fewer words are required. Have a go by all means; be intrepid, but be equipped.

I like going back and writing fiction.

I have never started a novel - I mean except the first, when I was starting a novel just to start a novel - I've never written one without rereading Victory. It opens up the possibilities of a novel. It makes it seem worth doing.

Each book has been different and has been challenging in its own way to write.