A Quote by John Grisham

I've written 17 novels, and I've found out that fiction can't keep up with real life. — © John Grisham
I've written 17 novels, and I've found out that fiction can't keep up with real life.
'Presumed Innocent' was written over a six to seven year period with intervals in between where I was figuring out the end of the book and writing other stuff... My life as a writer was carried on against the odds. I had written four unpublished novels by then... as a writer of fiction, I hadn't gotten very far. I just wanted to do it.
I'm a little skeptical of so-called narco fiction, I have to say, though some writers I admire may have written some narco fiction. You feel the dread and the atmosphere in Yuri Herrera's extraordinary novels, but you'd never say that what he writes is narco fiction. The same goes for Martin Solares's novels, inspired by the nightmare city of Tampico, where he's from. Valeria Luiselli, Álvaro Enrigue, I know that they're deeply affected by what goes on in Mexico, but their wonderful writing points in another direction, though not necessarily always and only.
The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of place is history. In novels they are detestable.
I think what is probably hard for people to imagine is how wrapped up the 17 years' work on Harry Potter is with what was going on in my life at the time. I was mourning the loss of this world that I had written for so long and loved so much. I was also mourning the retreat it had been from - from ordinary life, which it has been. And it forced me to look back at 17 years of my life and remember things.
I've written something like 17 novels, which isn't bad, I suppose, but my father wrote 120 books, my mother 40. In comparison, I'm lazy.
Writing short stories was kind of like I was cheating the whole time, in some way. I went back and forth between writing the novels and sort of sneaking out to work on stories occasionally. These stories were written over the last 10 years or so, as I was taking breaks from the novels I've written.
I tend to wait for true stories to mature into fiction. Most of my fiction grew out of a long-germinating real-life situation.
Historians turning their hands to fiction are all the rage. Since Alison Weir led the way in 2006, an ever-growing number of established non-fiction writers - Giles Milton, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Harry Sidebottom, Patrick Bishop, Ian Mortimer and myself included - have written historical novels.
The real origin of science fiction lay in the seventeeth-century novels of exploration in fabulous lands. Therefore Jules Verne's story of travel to the moon is not science fiction because they go by rocket but because of where they go. It would be as much science fiction if they went by rubber band.
Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.
It's my birthday today. I'm not 17 anymore. The 17 Janis Ian sang about where one learns the truth. But what she failed to mention is that you keep on learning truths after 17 and I want to keep on learning truths till the day I die.
I was on the lookout for something different, as I was exhausted with the fiction space. When I was asked to host 'Tujhse Naaraz Nahin Zindagi,' it was not as an actor but as an individual, and on being explained the concept, I found it interesting and accepted it since it was about real people and real life.
It cannot be said often enough that science fiction as a genre is incredibly educational - and I'm speaking the written science fiction, not 'Star Trek.' Science fiction writers tend to fill their books if they're clever with little bits of interesting stuff and real stuff.
I sometimes feel fiction is the ideal preservation for real memories. Fiction is such a good place to keep things.
I've found that writing novels is an all-absorbing experience - both physical and mental - and I have to do it every day in order to keep the rhythm, to keep myself focused on what I'm doing.
As a fan of science fiction and as a kid who loves monsters, science fiction movies and this, that and the other, there's no real way to make a career out of that. Especially when I grew up.
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