Simon Toyne Quotes

Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction.

Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things.

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've just always been very interested in story above all.

To write a story is to create a world of your own.

Fiction is organized gossip.

Character is always my driving force. And to tell a good story and to provide an entertaining read.

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author's world.

I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.

Kids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.'

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

When I give myself over to a good novel, I surrender to the truths fashioned from one writer's heart, mind and soul. I do not waste a nanosecond wondering whether what I'm reading 'really happened.'

I'm a storyteller, not a prophet. I'm just interested in a good story.

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

As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.

I'm a fan of great storytelling.

I think I'm always drawn to a good story.

I make things up for a living. It would be pretty boring to just fictionalize real people.

A story invites both writer and reader into a kind of superficial ease: we want to slide along, pleasingly entertained, lost in the fictional dream.

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!

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I'm a writer... I write.

I was so in love with books from as early as I remember that it seemed a natural step to want to create them. And so I just wanted to be a writer from a very young age. And I think that the lies were just a natural side effect of me wanting to tell stories and write them down.

I'm really into the idea of telling stories. Everyone needs stories. Everyone needs to escape every once in a while.

People want good stories.

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