Circumstances Quote by Dani Shapiro

I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme, or something. If they…

— Doris Lessing

I can't remove the autobiographical slant from the things I write. You always bring yourself into what you're writing.

— Natalie Merchant

I do not think writers or anybody would sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme, or something. If they…

— Doris Lessing

As a fiction writer, of course, you need to take some leeway with certain aspects of history to make the story work.

— Joseph Boyden

In a way, I see my fiction as having moved in that direction - and the characters as dealing simultaneously with their personal history…

— Frederick Busch

biography cannot be separated from autobiography: that is, the life written about is inextricably entangled with the life of the biographer.

— Linda Simon

Writers are historians, too. It is in literature that the greater truths about a people and their past are found.

— F. Sionil Jose

The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events.

— Frank Herbert

Every writer has certain subjects that they write about again and again, and . . . most people's books are just variations on certain themes.

— Christopher Isherwood

Fiction is ideally suited to re-creating the important emotional aspects of history.

— Alix Kates Shulman

“Writers use narratives to select from everything there is, and make contexts by putting the pieces into relation; that’s what writers do, they make…

— Paul Shepheard

So I think a writer should write what he loves, the people he relates to.

— David E. Kelley