Able Quote by Alan Lightman

The art of fiction is freedom of will for your characters.

— Cynthia Ozick

It is important not to force a character into something. Fiction writers can be too controlling - usually that's a terror of our own…

— Jeanette Winterson

Writing fiction means putting a lot of what you believe about the world at risk, because you have to follow your characters.

— Phil Klay

It's a scary thing for fiction writers, when you're always writing from the point of view both as and for someone who is different.

— Alice Mattison

As a writer of fiction, you don't ever want to limit the characters you create to the life you've lived. That's insanity to me.

— Courtney A. Kemp

Fiction writers are strange beasts. They are, like all writers, observers first and foremost. Everything that happens to and around them is potential material…

— Terry Brooks

When you're writing fiction, you're in every character 'cause you can't help it.

— Marcia Clark

The beauty of prose fiction that I see is simply that in order to create something you need only pay attention to personal exigency.

— James Kelman

Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see…

— David Foster Wallace

I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully. You can't let your characters just be mouthpieces for your ideas. They have to…

— Alan Lightman

I think it's possible to be just a fiction writer, and I don't think that it's a luxury. Oftentimes, what fiction does is approach…

— Torrey Peters