Monica Johnson Quotes

I'll take a certain concern of my own or a situation and try to frame it around a fictional story, but sometimes just straight-up autobiographical songs work well, and sometimes a story is better. I like stories. I like to hear them. I don't think there are enough of them in songs anymore.

I think anything that anyone writes that's any good is going to have a lot of autobiography.

Though my stories aren't autobiographical, I do sometimes use things from my life.

If you look at the content of songs people write, it's usually about the things they know best.

Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.

Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds.

I began writing fiction when I started running out of material in my own life.

Every writer is going to end up drawing from their own experiences in one way or another.

There are autobiographical elements to the albums, and when I write, I always reference my own life as well as other things, so I'm just like any novelist or any fiction writer who tells stories.

I don't write autobiographically.

It's so fun to make up stories, but I find that the songs that I'm most proud of came from a real thing in my life - 'Peter Pan' being one of those.

There are so many stories to be told, by so many good writers.

We've always written from personal experiences.

I write about personal experiences.

A lot of things that I write about have happened to people around me, if not necessarily to me or in the organizations I've worked in. Having said that, it's fiction and has a lot to do with my imagination and creativity.

While novels are fiction, mine are usually very close to my heart. Like my other books, 'The Lemon Orchard' is inspired by something I care about. I care so deeply. The stories are my dreams, and I want to do a lot of research. Roberto is based on a real live friend of mine named Armando who worked in my garden.

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.'

A great danger, or at least a great temptation, for many writers is to become too autobiographical in their approach to their fiction. A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.

For a writer, they say write what you know. As a performer, you find it in yourself, in your heart. You relate to the character. You try to live it, try to have it be real for you.

When I'm writing my blog, I think of myself at 13 years old, back in St. Louis, daydreaming about Hollywood.

I never fantasized or invented a thing, not one thing. I knew every single thing I ever wrote about.

Writers should be applauded for their ability to make things up.

I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children.

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

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.