The best fiction writers are the most believable liars...

“Ron Carlson says, 'The most undervalued craft device that fiction writers need is empathy. You need to be able to actually imagine what your…

— Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

It is popular to believe that in order to see clearly one must believe nothing. This may work well enough if you are observing…

— Flannery O'Connor

The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where the human perception begins. He appeals through the senses,…

— Flannery O'Connor

Science fiction writers put characters into a world with arbitrary rules and work out what happens.

— Rudy Rucker

Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil-but there is no way…

— Isaac Asimov

“Good fiction writers have an instinctive understanding of human nature. That's what makes stories and characters captivating. Good spiritual writers share what they sincerely…

— Donna Goddard

Technically and logically speaking, actual Victorian science fiction writers cannot be dubbed 'steampunks.' Although they utilized many of the same tropes and touchstones employed…

— Paul Di Filippo

Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything.

— Philip K. Dick

The fiction writer has a lot of balls to juggle. Setting, pacing, dialogue, and so on. And let's not forget: plot. That was always…

— Cate Marvin

Science fiction writers missed the most salient feature of our modern era: the Internet.

— Jack McDevitt

I've always loved science fiction. I think the smartest writers are science fiction writers dealing with major things.

— Walter Mosley

I don't think the function of writing, at least for me as a fiction writer, is to say to people, "Here's the answer." It's…

— Mohsin Hamid

It's our job as fiction writers to provide a delight that nothing else can - to such a degree that people have no choice…

— Jennifer Egan

A lot of the despair we feel watching the news every day flows from our sense of helplessness, and as a fiction writer you…

— Ron Currie Jr

My writing process is ritualized and monotonous, but there's no other way to get the job done. All other fiction writers I've met say…

— Douglas Coupland