A Quote by Romesh Gunesekera

I like inventing things when I write rather than autobiography.

Romesh Gunesekera

Quote Topics

Autobiography Inventing Inventing Things Like Rather Than Things Write

Quote Author

Romesh Gunesekera
Sri Lankan - Author
Born: 1954

Most people write a lot of autobiography, but when I came to write autobiography I discovered that nothing interesting had ever happened to me. So I had to take the situation and invent stories to go with it.

W. P. Kinsella

The more of my readers I encounter who say, often apologetically, that they are actually listeners, the more I write for the ear rather than the eye. Small things like identifying speakers in dialogue rather than relying on paragraphing to mark the shifts.

H. W. Brands

Yes, one uses what one knows, but autobiography means something else. I should never be able to write a real autobiography; I always end by falsifying and fictionalizing—I’m a liar, in fact. That means I’m a novelist, after all. I write about what I know.

Alberto Moravia

When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.

John Irving

The more I think about our species the more I think we just do stuff and make up explanations later when asked. But it's not true that I would rather write than read. I would rather read than write. To be honest I would rather hang upside down in a bucket than write.

Douglas Adams

I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and they're so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn't.

Philip Roth

What you hear depends on how you focus your ear. We're not talking about inventing a new language, but rather inventing new perceptions of existing languages.

Philip Glass

It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one.

Antonin Scalia

I don't know that I ever wanted greatness, on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something--or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it's just an ego trip.

Roger Zelazny

Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'

Kate Atkinson

The liquid metal battery story is more than an account of inventing technology. It's a blueprint for inventing inventors.

Donald Sadoway

I thought it would be more interesting to make a musical autobiography than an actual autobiography.

Ian Brown

I think I'm succinct to the point of trying to write the two-word novel. Editing my work almost never means taking anything out but rather adding, because I'm always stripping down. I tend to under-write rather than over-write.

Kate DiCamillo

I like the idea of becoming [fairly] good at lots of things rather than very good at just one thing. So it would be nice to be okay at the guitar or at the piano, a reasonable cook, perhaps able to fix your car or do some basic carpentry, and be able to write the odd article. Rather than being super good at one tiny thing, to be kind of average at lots of things. It might mean that you have a more kind of enjoyable, complete life.

Tom Hodgkinson

Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.