Book Quote by Alison Bechdel

As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

It is less the business of the novelist to tell us what happened than to show how it happened.

— V. S. Pritchett

“What happened is the least of it. It’s a novel, and once you’ve finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance…

— Javier Marías

In any novel I write, I have in my mind several things which happened in the protagonist's past which I never mention in the…

— Roger Zelazny

A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.

— Alain de Botton

There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance.

— Samuel Johnson

I think I was born with the impression that what happened in books was much more reasonable, and interesting, and real, in some ways,…

— Anne Tyler

Most of the authors are crazy and curious.

— Rakii Retondo

There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.

— Neil Gaiman

Mostly what happens in the novels never happened in real life.

— Anne Lamott

Most writers spend their lives standing a little apart from the crowd, watching and listening and hoping to catch that tiny hint of despair,…

— Ayelet Waldman

“A novel must show how the world truly is, how characters genuinely think, how events actually occur. A novel should somehow reveal the true…

— Anonymous