A Quote by Vivian Gornick

I don't write fiction but I do write narrative; I write memoirs that I treat like stories, so whenever I'm using somebody I actually know as a model, I am submitting them to the agenda of a storyteller, and I feel free to do what I want.

Vivian Gornick

Quote Topics

Actually Agenda Am Feel Fiction Free Know Like Memoirs Model Narrative Somebody Stories Storyteller Them Treat Using Want Whenever Write

Quote Author

Vivian Gornick
American - Critic
Born: June 14, 1935

Well I'm not a storyteller, as far as telling stories which relate to experiences in my own life. That's not what I do. I write songs which have a narrative and attempt to make sense and tell a story - sure! But whenever I hear the word "storyteller" I think of a children's musician.

Freedy Johnston

I write what I want to write. Period. I don't write novels-for-hire using media tie-in characters, I don't write suspense novels or thrillers. I write horror. And if no one wants to buy my books, I'll just keep writing them until they do sell--and get a job at Taco Bell in the meantime.

Bentley Little

I can write anywhere. I write in airports. I write on airplanes. I've written in the back seats of taxis. I write in hotel rooms. I love hotel rooms. I just write wherever I am whenever I need to write.

Garrison Keillor

I write in reverse: Rather than come up with a narrative and write jokes for that narrative, I write jokes independently of the narrative, then I try to fit them in.

Jeff Kinney

I write because I have an innate need to. I write because I can't do normal work. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it.

Orhan Pamuk

If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and write. If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write. If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again. Write. Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less.

Anne Rice

I am a writer, which means I write stories, I write novels, and I would write poetry if I knew how to. I don't want to limit myself.

Aleksandar Hemon

Writing the past is never a neutral act. Writing always asks the past to justify itself, to give its reasons... provided we can live with the reasons. What we want is a narrative, not a log; a tale, not a trial. This is why most people write memoirs using the conventions not of history, but of fiction.

Andre Aciman

When public figures write memoirs, there is always some indecision regarding how much they want to write of things as they were and how much they want to cut corners to avoid riling up others. I decided to write my memoirs exactly as they were, and I will not digress - not when things are ill at ease and not when they are comfortable.

Ehud Olmert

I think my first general rule is that most of my experiences are not that interesting. It's usually other people's experiences. It's not that entirely conscious. Somebody tells me a story or, you know, repeats an anecdote that somebody else told them and I just feel like I have to write it down so I don't forget - that means for me, something made it fiction-worthy. Interesting things never happen to me, so maybe two or three times when they do, I have to use them, so I write them down.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

There's basically an element of fiction in everything you remember. Imagination and memory are almost the same brain processes. When I write fiction, I know that I'm using a bunch of lies that I've made up to create some form of truth. When I write a memoir, I'm using true elements to create something that will always be somehow fictionalized.

Isabel Allende

My vocation is to write and I have known this for a long time. I hope I won't be misunderstood; I know nothing about the value of the things I am able to write. I know that writing is my vocation. When I sit down to write I feel extraordinarily at ease, and I move in an element which, it seems to me, I know extraordinarily well; I use tools that are familiar to me and they fit snugly in my hands. But when I write stories I am like someone who is in her own country, walking along streets that she has known since she was a child, between walls and trees that are hers.

Natalia Ginzburg

That's why I write fiction, because I want to write these stories that people will read and find universal.

Jesmyn Ward

I write fiction longhand. That's not so much about rejecting technology as being unable to write fiction on a computer for some reason. I don't think I would write it on a typewriter either. I write in a very blind gut instinctive way. It just doesn't feel right. There's a physical connection. And then in nonfiction that's not the case at all. I can't even imagine writing nonfiction by hand.

Jennifer Egan

I don't know why I write. The honest answer is that I don't have an answer. I wouldn't die if I couldn't write fiction. Actually keel over and die - it's unlikely. But quite quickly writing has come to feel like the only thing I really know how to do. And I go a bit stir crazy if I don't write more or less every day. But that makes writing sound like a mood-regulator, a way to regulate anxiety or depression, and it doesn't really come down to that.