Michelle Huneven Quotes

First of all, writing at best - certainly fiction writing - more and more I think is magic.

Sometimes my lyrics may describe a situation that happened to a friend. Other times, I create a story from the ground up.

Novels are longer than life.

I always take a story that's kind of out there, like an urban myth. I take some possibility that people imagine, that they are familiar with, and try to turn it into a story.

That's the most amazing thing about writing, whether it's in prose or comics: that you can create something from nothing, and suddenly they come to life, like they've always been there.

Storytelling is really at the root of everything that I do.

Writers do not write what they know. They write what they can imagine.

A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

From Shakespeare to Robi Thakur, everyone has written stories about people and incidents around them. There is no creativity minus reality irrespective of how flowery or abstract you make it.

As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

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

Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction.

For me, literature is a complex game, both mental and concrete, which is acted out in a physical manner on the page.

My secrets must be poetic to be believable.

I try and make little stories. Whether it's with a pencil or with bits of records, it's really the same thing.

The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.

Literature is the question minus the answer.

I'm always saying that my books are not autobiographical because they're not. I can't choose any one scene and say, 'Oh, this is exactly what happened to me!' I just use little snippets of things as a starting point!

All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at the same time, a novel is never autobiographical even if it describes the life of the author. Literary writing is a completely different medium.

I tend to have an endless number of ideas for writing projects. I don't necessarily say that as a good thing. Maybe it's a good thing, but I have ideas for all kinds of projects: contemporary novels, graphic novels, anything that happens to go through my mind.

I like inventing things when I write rather than autobiography.

When I was young, I assumed that authors must have traveled the world or done exotic things in order to tell great stories.

Novels will remain my meat and potatoes, what sustain me imaginatively.

Once they're on paper, they're gone. I like to do as much with the words, as far as image goes.