A Quote by Wendelin Van Draanen

It's experiences in life that give us something to write about, and since good fiction is applied tension, you'll have an arsenal of good material if life hasn't been peachy (and not a whole lot if it has).

Wendelin Van Draanen

Quote Topics

About Applied Arsenal Been Experiences Fiction Give Good Good Material Life Lot Material Peachy Since Something Tension Us Whole Write

Quote Author

Wendelin Van Draanen
American - Author
Born: January 6, 1965

Sometime really good writing does you a disservice as an actor. Because you can get lazy. It's doing a lot of the work for you. I guess that's good. But at the same time with material that's not so good, you have to be more inventive, because no thought has been applied to it.

Meryl Streep

There's a lot of material from my life in my books, but they're not really autobiographical, in the sense that they're not about my life. So, in 'A Feather on the Breath of God' I write about my parents, I write about this Russian immigrant, I write about the world of dance, but it isn't an autobiography; so much is left out.

Sigrid Nunez

A lot of people talk about life. Some love it. Some disparage it. And a few realize that life can be what you make it because they have learned from past experiences. Lessons learned from these experiences have often contributed greatly toward seeing the possibilities in what some people call "the game of life." When we've "been there" and "done that," we can have as good of an idea of what we don't want as what we do want. Experience is certainly an excellent teacher!

John Templeton

No writer, I believe, should attempt a novel before he is thirty, and not then unless he has been hopelessly and helplessly involved in life. For the writer who goes out to find material for a novel, as a fishermen goes out to sea to fish, will certainly not write a good novel. Life has to be lived thoughtlessly, unconsciously, at full tilt and for no purpose except its own sake before it becomes, eventually, good material for a novel.

Pearl S. Buck

We listened to Donald Trump speak at the debate about 'Stop and Frisk.' I don't think it's a good way to go through life. I don't think that's going to solve any of our problems. It's actually going to make racial tension a whole lot worse, and it's going to make us feel like we're singled out.

Booker T

A lot of life is about trying to turn bad experiences into something good. Usually if you work at it, you can figure out a way to do it. Even our worst misfortunes are gifts.

Robert Kennedy, Jr.

My feeling about fiction, regardless of the genre, is that it is meant to be a representation of life. I want my books to give a whole spectrum of experiences to my readers. Not just fear or terror or revulsion, but excitement, laughter, pain, sorrow, desire, etc.

Richard Laymon

I've been writing music since I was about eight. I would write sporadically. I wrote a lot of music in high school. I guess the oldest song on the record ("I Thought I Saw Your Face") is about eight years old. It's the old "I had my whole life to write my first album and six months to write the second one." I did, to some degree, but actually, a lot of the songs that ended up on the record, I wrote really recently. So it varies.

Zooey Deschanel

Anyone who can only write about themselves or their life experiences, in my mind, isn't a very good writer.

Robert Rodriguez

I needed my life as a springboard for my fiction. I have to have something solid under my feet when I write. I'm not a fantasist. I bounce up and down on the diving board, and I go into the water of fiction. But I've got to begin in life so I can pump life into it throughout.

Philip Roth

I guess my music career is my personal life. You know, I've always been a writer who wants to write about my experiences. And so this experience being added to that, I - I want to live extraordinary experiences. And when I give advice to people, I want it to be sage advice.

Jason Mraz

In writing fiction, I can be free. I can use my life. The raw material is my experiences.

Miriam Toews

I've been lucky enough - well, maybe unlucky enough - to have had a lot of friends who have had their ups and downs. And for an actor, that's good. Life experience in any regard is good. So I've seen a lot and I've had my own experiences.