Sarah Weinman Quotes

The novelist has a responsibility to adhere to the facts as closely as possible, and if they are inconvenient, that's where the art comes in. You must work with intractable facts and find the dramatic shape inside them.

It's true that I don't rearrange that much in the fiction, but I feel if you change even one name or the order of one event then you have to call it fiction or you get all the credits of non-fiction without paying the price.

I go into any movie that's historical fiction thinking, 'OK, I'm here to watch a work of art, something delivering a series of opinions, and if it's a good work of art, these opinions become so deeply embedded in complexity and richness that I won't even be bothered by the opinions. I'll make my own mind up.'

While writing 'Half of a Yellow Sun,' I enjoyed playing with minor things: inventing a train station in a town that has none, placing towns closer to each other than they are, changing the chronology of conquered cities. Yet I did not play with the central events of that time.

You don't have to have a true story to make a true story movie.

Whenever Hollywood gets involved with real life events, certain liberties have to be taken.

You're making a movie, not a documentary. If you made a film like the historians would like you to make, you're not going to go and see it. I'd rather see paint dry.

I was always at heart a novelist and wanted to tell a bigger story, so I wanted to create people who told other kinds of truths than literal truths.

The really great novel tends to be the exact negative of its author's life.

Not to make too much of a claim for poetry, but this is a question that goes to the moral heart of the business of any art: 'How do you see the world, and what right do you have to see the world in the way that you do?'

Initial work is on period research where the historical markers are absolutely non-negotiable. Once that is established, a writer can take creative liberties in terms of chronology to suit the story.

I don't like docudramas. Documentaries should not go together with fiction, or half-fiction or quarter-fiction. The two should not go together. They cannot mix.

There’s dramatic license, which is necessary or nothing’s fun, and historical truth, which is necessary or nothing’s understood.

If a film is based on a true story and you don't use anyone's name, you can do what you like.

I use things, I steal things from my life when I want to, when I need to, or when it seems appropriate. But most of the stuff in my novels is entirely invented, ninety-five percent. And even when I do borrow something, it becomes fictionalized.

A lot of novels use crime as a stepping stone to talk about greater issues. So I just think of myself as a writer.

I've been writing since 1973. I've written nonfiction things of that nature, but I'm probably best known for crime fiction and, to some extent, horror fiction.

With fiction, you can do whatever you want to, but if you are making a film on someone, you have to stick to the truth. You cannot just say that I will change the climax because I do not like it.

You can't take a story and just stretch it out - that does not a novel make.

Never give an artist like me carte blanche: he would think it's simply toilet paper.

I've seen situations where I think comics are really unrealistic about what creative expression and what the artistic freedom, what that entails.

You amp things up and you speed things up, but technically, you can still be legally correct. This is the big beef I have with novels as well as television shows - it actually makes for a better show when you accommodate the truth.

Even I have certain depictions that I personally don't like, but I don't believe artists should necessarily follow a particular person's preference. They should focus on the things they like and follow their own desires.

A novel, at least for me, cannot be visualized at one time.

'Deer Hunter' is a movie; it is not an attempt to write history.