Books Quote by Dana Spiotta

The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But…

— Ruth Park

I am suspicious of writers who say their work is original and influenced by nobody. If it is, it is probably uninteresting. The biggest…

— Teju Cole

Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to…

— Yann Martel

There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in…

— Anthony Burgess

Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?

— Tanith Lee

Novels are one of the few remaining areas of narrative storytelling where one person does almost all of the creative heavy lifting.

— Charles Stross

Today there is a division between those who write about literature and those who create it. I, obviously, don't think that should be there.

— Alistair MacLeod

There's no division on my bookshelf between fiction and nonfiction. As far as I'm concerned, fiction is about the truth.

— Arundhati Roy

We are living in an era of such interesting new forms, and certainly narrative non-fiction has emerged as a major form. People who are…

— Daniel Mendelsohn

There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in…

— Anthony Burgess

It's perceived as an accolade to be published as a 'literary' writer, but, actually, it's pompous and it's fake. Literary fiction is often nothing…

— Neil Cross

When novels deal in abstractions, they generally go off the rails.

— Philipp Meyer