Fiction Limitations Quotes

There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book.

I can't be alone among fiction writers in regarding the world, so much weirder than anything we could make up, as beating us at our own game or in racking my brains over what could possibly constitute a contribution when novels pale before the newspaper.

I do understand my limitations as a fiction writer, which is why my novels are always going to be close to home.

As much as I love historical fiction, my problem with historical fiction is that you always know what's going to happen.

The facts of life are the impossibilities of fiction.

Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.

Sex is hard to write about because you lose the universal and succumb to the particular. We all have our different favorites. Good sex is impossible to write about. Lawrence and Updike have given it their all, and the result is still uneasy and unsure. It may be that good sex is something fiction just can't do - like dreams. Most of the sex in my novels is absolutely disastrous. Sex can be funny, but not very sexy.

Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real.