A Quote by Charles Bukowski

Fiction is an improvement on life

Charles Bukowski

Quote Topics

Fiction Improvement Life

Quote Author

Charles Bukowski
American - Novelist
August 16, 1920 - March 9, 1994

Remember William Blake who said: "Improvement makes straight, straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius." The truth is, life itself, is always startling, strange, unexpected. But when the truth is told about it everybody knows at once that it is life itself and not made up. But in ordinary fiction, movies, etc, everything is smoothed out to seem plausible--villains made bad, heroes splendid, heroines glamorous, and so on, so that no one believes a word

Brenda Ueland

I believe that Judaism was an improvement on polytheism; Christianity was an improvement on Judaism (to some degree and in some departments only); that Protestantism is an improvement on Catholicism; that Mormonism is an improvement on Protestantism. So I give Joseph Smith credit as an innovator and as a smart fellow.

Thomas Ferguson

I was a teacher most of my life, which I loved. I had a very happy working life, and when I retired, I thought I must do something, and I've always read a lot of fiction - you learn so much from fiction. My sentimental education came mostly from fiction, I should say, so I thought I'd try.

Anita Brookner

All improvement in your life begins with an improvement in your mental pictures.

Brian Tracy

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

Any political process has to secure an improvement in the Palestinians' quality of life and education. Attempts to bring about a political arrangement before securing peace to the Israelis and economic improvement for the Palestinians are likely to fail.

Avigdor Lieberman

I spend my life writing fiction, so reading fiction isn't much of an escape. That's not always true, but I don't read much contemporary fiction.

Alan Furst

I think love is a huge factor in fiction and in real life. Is there a risk? Always. In fiction and in life

Alice Hoffman

I think love is a huge factor in fiction and in real life. Is there a risk? Always. In fiction and in life.

Alice Hoffman

Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and life doesn't.

Neil Gaiman

I think fiction can help us find everything. You know, I think that in fiction you can say things and in a way be truer than you can be in real life and truer than you can be in non-fiction. There's an accuracy to fiction that people don't really talk about - an emotional accuracy.

A.M. Homes

I haven't written a word of fiction since 2009. I have no desire to write fiction. I did what I did and it's done. There's more to life than writing and publishing fiction. There is another way entirely, amazed as I am to discover it at this late date.

Philip Roth

I used to write fiction, non-fiction, fiction, non-fiction and have a clear pattern because I'd need a break from one style when going into the next book.

Zoe Foster Blake

I've loved science fiction my whole life. But I've never made a science fiction movie. And it's [World Of Tomorrow] sort of a parody of science fiction at the same time. It's all of the things I find interesting in sci-fi amplified.