Josh Gondelman Quotes

I'm a novelist first, and I wrote a bunch of books, and everything I write, I just find people are more interesting when there's an element of humor to it.

For me, nudity and strong language have never been huge loadbearing elements of how I like to tell a story. Graphic images certainly are.

Because I was a television writer for many years, I write very conversationally. I put things straight, and with a lot of humor.

There are things I'm doing with 'The After' that would've never flown on 'The X-Files' and on network television, so it's more permissive. That's not to say that you want to abuse that. I think that a show like 'The X-Files' actually worked better as a network show with the restraints put on it, the censorship that was applied.

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.

I think anything goes in fiction as long as it fits within the interior logic of the work itself and is presented in a disciplined manner.

Stephen King has inspired me with his humor and honesty, and his admonition that the author's job is to tell the truth.

Is there nothing the prodigiously talented Ann Patchett can't do? She's channeled the world of opera, Boston politics, magic, unwed motherhood, and race relations, creating scenarios so indelible, you swear they are right outside your door.

Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.

I create fictional narratives, but it's based on literal people.

Novelists have always had complete freedom to pretty much tell their story any way they saw fit. And that's what I'm trying to do.

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.

Successful fiction does not need to be validated by 'real life'; I cringe whenever a writer is asked how much of a novel is 'real'.

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

An actor cannot be a censor. I'm there to interpret.

I think writers have become hypnotised by the number of jokes on the page at the expense of character.

I am not brave enough to not pay my income tax and risk going to jail. But I can say rather freely what I want to say with my art.

To me there's no difference between a book of stories and a novel - they're just slightly different shapes.

A novel, even a social realist one, can't simply be a comprehensive rendering of what is. A novel requires a special angle or approach, whether in structure or language or theme, to justify itself.

Octavia Butler was more interested in writing a good story than in worrying about where to slot it.

If you want to write serious books, you must be ready to break the forms.

It's a real challenge to complete a story arc and end up with a cool punchline in 120 characters.

You can have ambiguity in television that you are not allowed in film... at least in Hollywood studio films.

Obviously I don't want to make a film that offends people, but the whole world is so politically correct - I'm not going to not do something because it may be politically incorrect. At some point, the metaphors and allegories break down. They disappear, and you just have science fiction.

I don't think any of our lyrics have ever been erotic in a sexual term, because I haven't really written, touched on, that subject too often. But, uh... I mean, I suppose they could point the finger at us for violence maybe in certain songs.