I never accepted why there should be some invisible, wavy cutoff line separating Great Fiction from phosphorescent beauties and dollhouse miniatures, novels that contain a whole world in a snow globe.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.
There was a lot of fiction I did not enjoy, whose landscapes seemed bland and unevocative, the characters faint-hearted within them, the very words lacking vibrancy.
Fiction demands structures and recognizable shapes. Big surprises only draw attention to the writer's hand.
When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories.
If utopian fiction became the new trend, I wouldn't read it.
I always love novels that open up a subject to me - like raising a window to a beautiful, mysterious world outside.
My grief is that the publishing world, the book writing world is an extraordinary shoddy, dirty, dingy world.
One reason we love fiction is because stories have a comforting shape. They provide a resolution that's lacking in our regular lives.
Film is a medium of clear lines and broad strikes - which can be fantastic - but compared to the subtleties and nuances of a novel, it doesn't even get close.
A good novel editor is invisible.
No opposing quotes found.