In this choice, as I look back over more than half a century, I can only follow - and trust - the same sort of instinct that one follows in the art of fiction.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
There's a unique bond of trust between readers and authors that I don't believe exists in any other art form; as a reader, I trust a novelist to give me his or her best effort, however flawed.
I think fiction lends itself to messiness rather than the ideal, and plays well with the ironies surrounding what happens versus what should happen.
Writing is such a solitary thing, so it's nice, when I'm discouraged, to see people still have such faith in fiction.
Most fiction comes from your experience.
You have to believe in yourself and only trust your own vision and instincts. If I'd listened to what other people thought about my work in the first 10 years that I was a writer, I never would have made it to begin with.
I generally find fiction without some move to the weird, less imaginative, dull, prosaic. Not all of it, of course, but a lot of it. I suppose it's just a question of taste.
I have a longing for fiction - to try to believe in it and to disappear into it.
The best fiction stays with you and changes you.
Obviously, I love to do both contemporary and historical fiction. When a hint of a story grabs me, I try to go with it to see where it will take me whatever the setting.
There's a convention that books are mirrors of the real world, but our fact-obsessed age also wants fiction to be factually based and trustworthy.
No opposing quotes found.