Under My Skin: Volume I of my Autobiography to 1949. This was the first volume of a two volume autobiography, covering birth in 1919 to leaving Southern Rhodesia.
I just came across this quote by Doris Lessing (from the first volume of her autobiography, Under My Skin):
“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.”
In the dedication for the novel It, Stephen King says:
“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.” (That bit is part of a longer sentence, but works better on its own.)
I’ve been thinking about this all day. I know that if I go looking I can find similar quotes by writers, but really what interests me is the juxtaposition of lie – truth – fiction.
I add to this list when I come across something that strikes me. If you have a quote you’d like to suggest for the list, please comment below and if at all possible, include the author and source. It’s the academic in me to want to give full credit wherever possible.
The quotes are in no particular order. Also, you will find the occasional sentence or two quoted from a novel because, well. I love it.
Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
A story is told as much by silence as by speech.
Rule one of reading other people’s stories is that whenever you say ‘well that’s not convincing’ the author tells you that’s the bit that wasn’t made up. This is because real life is under no obligation to be convincing.
A writer’s brain is like a magician’s hat. If you’re going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in it first.
Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist’s true friends.
I do not think I can get any nearer than this to the sources of my story-telling; I can only say that the process, though it takes place in some secret region on the sheer edge of consciousness, is always illuminated by the full light of my critical attention.
Being a writer means having homework for the rest of your life.
There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.
A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
People have writer’s block not because they can’t write, but because they despair of writing eloquently.
Even writers need relief from words.
Blind people got a hummin jones if you notice.
I’ve never known a writer who didn’t feel ill at ease in the world. … We write about the world because it doesn’t make sense to us. Through writing, maybe we can penetrate it, elucidate it, somehow make it comprehensible.
There is only one plot—things are not what they seem.
If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.
Easy reading is damn hard writing.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others
The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.
So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself, any direction you choose.
Writing: the only time in your life when you really are Master of a Universe.
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter.
I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.
I try to leave out the parts that people skip.
You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
A synonym is a word you use when you can’t spell the other one.
Writing is both mask and unveiling.
It’s all a draft until you die.
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.
The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.
The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamouring to become visible
Inspiration exists but it has to find you working.
The writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree, and then when they are up there, throw rocks at them.
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
There is a busybody on your staff who devotes a lot of time to chasing split infinitives… I call for the immediate dismissal of this pedant. It is of no consequence whether he decides to go quickly or to quickly go or quickly to go. The important thing is that he should go at once.
A novel can educate to some extent, but first a novel has to entertain. That’s the contract with the reader: you give me ten hours and I’ll give you a reason to turn every page. I have a commitment to accessibility. I believe in plot. I want an English professor to understand the symbolism while at the same time I want the people I grew up with — — who may not often read anything but the Sears catalog — — to read my books.
…writing stories is one of the most assertive things a person can do. Fiction is an act of willfulness, a deliberate effort to reconceive, to rearrange, to reconstitute nothing short of reality itself. Even among the most reluctant and doubtful of writers, this willfulness must emerge. Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying, ‘Listen to me.’
Starting to write a book: There is no agony like it.
They sicken of the calm who know the storm.
The writing is – I’m free from pain. It’s the place where I live; it’s where I have control; it’s where nobody tells me what to do; it’s where my imagination is fecund and I am really at my best. Nothing matters more in the world or in my body or anywhere when I’m writing.
History is the unfolding of miscalculations.
if a book is well written, I always find it too short.
The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.
After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.
Write what should not be forgotten
If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.
The story–from Rumplestiltskin to War and Peace–is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind for the purpose of understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul.
If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive.
It’s a terrible poison, writing.
The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you’re writing about. It doesn’t encumber you, it makes you free.
Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn’t expecting it.
A couple times in my life I’ve avoided falling in love. The first time I was aware of doing it was in 1985, which was a watershed kind of year for me: I had a breast cancer scare (that turned out to be benign); My father went into a steep decline and died; A six-year long relationship finally crashed and burned; I met the Mathematician; I started field work for my doctoral dissertation; and I saw a movie that I tried not to see.
The Eric Garden was a tiny theater on Nassau Street in Princeton, just across from the university. I didn’t often have money or time for the movies, but then one day I saw a new movie poster to the left of the ticket booth. Recall that this was long before you could google a movie trailer to see what it was about, so the poster was all I had, but on that basis it was clear to me that this was a movie I would adore.
Look at it, this object of my reluctant admiration. I still get a flush when I see it, all these years later.
The odd part: I simply could not make myself buy a ticket and go inside. I waited until the last day of its run, and then, sure enough, I was very put out with myself for waiting. I would have happily bought another twenty tickets and seen it twenty more times. Assuming of course my graduate school budget had stretched so far. Because I waited, it was a couple years before I could see it again, but I thought about it, a lot.
So now this phenomenon has repeated itself, but this time with a novel. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society came out in 2009 so it has been about eight years that I’ve successfully avoided reading it. I somehow knew that I would love it, and so I stayed away from it.
I’m here to confess that again, I was wrong to wait. I just finished it, at 2 a.m., and I’m kicking myself because now I know that The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is one of those novels that I will re-read every year. I’ll start feeling lonely for it first. Then the story will keep intruding into whatever I’m thinking about until I give in, sit down and read it again. There are maybe six novels and just as many movies that have this ability to kidnap my attention.
As I just finished reading this novel, I need to think about it for a while before I’ll be able to put into words why I like it as much as I do. Of course that will mean reading it again. Once or twice, at least.
You've stumbled across my official website and landed on the front page of my weblog.
My name is Rosina Lippi. I'm a former academic and tenured university professor, writing full time since 2000. Under the pen name Sara Donati I am the author of the Wilderness series, six historical novels that follow the fortunes of a group of families living in upstate New York from about 1792-1825. A new series based on later generations of the same families was launched September 1, 2015 with The Gilded Hour. The next volume in the new series, Where the Light Enters, was released in 2019.
Please see the pinned post for an overview of what you'll find on this weblog, and what has been moved to the wiki (including the FAQ page).
Wise Guys
If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn’t expecting it.
The Eric Garden was a tiny theater on Nassau Street in Princeton, just across from the university. I didn’t often have money or time for the movies, but then one day I saw a new movie poster to the left of the ticket booth. Recall that this was long before you could google a movie trailer to see what it was about, so the poster was all I had, but on that basis it was clear to me that this was a movie I would adore.
Look at it, this object of my reluctant admiration. I still get a flush when I see it, all these years later.
So now this phenomenon has repeated itself, but this time with a novel. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society came out in 2009 so it has been about eight years that I’ve successfully avoided reading it. I somehow knew that I would love it, and so I stayed away from it. 
You've stumbled across my official website and landed on the front page of my weblog.