I resisted children's writing for a long time. I saw myself as a writer of literary fiction. But I had so much more fun writing kids' books.
If I'm going to invest the time in a novel, I want something more than the entertainment you get out of most genre fiction.
The biggest challenge of my career, which is something that authors of genre fiction face all the time, is writing something fresh and new and at the same time meeting reader expectations.
It's really important in any historical fiction, I think, to anchor the story in its time. And you do that by weaving in those details, by, believe it or not, by the plumbing.
Time limits are fictional. Losing all sense of time is actually the way to reality. We use clocks and calendars for convenience sake, not because that kind of time is real.
Generally, I read nonfiction. There's very little fiction that I enjoy enough to spend my time reading. I am generally a nonfiction guy.
The novelist's obligation to remake the sensuous texture of a vanished world is also the historian's. The strongest fiction writers often do deep research to make the thought and utterances of lost time credible.
A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.
Well, to be honest I think I tell less truth when I write journalism than when I write fiction.
Marcus Aurelius: Let us pretend that you are a loving daughter, and I am a good father. Lucilla: This is a pleasant fiction, is it not?
Cecilia: I just met a wonderful new man. He's fictional but you can't have everything.
Jimmie: I can't believe this is the same car. The Wolf: Well, let's not start sucking each other's dicks quite yet.
Fabienne: Whose motorcycle is this? Butch: It's a chopper, baby. Fabienne: Whose chopper is this? Butch: It's Zed's. Fabienne: Who's Zed? Butch: Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead.
Vincent: Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go home and have a heart attack.
Vincent: That's a pretty fucking good milkshake. I don't know if it's worth five dollars but it's pretty fucking good.
Vincent: Thank you. Mind if I shoot it up here? Lance: Hey, mi casa su casa.
Esmeralda: So what does it feel like to kill a man with your bare hands? It's a topic I'm very interested in.
[after Mia has her overdose] Vincent: Oh, Jesus Christ. Oh, fuck me! Fuck me!
Vincent: If you'll excuse me, I gotta go home and have a heart attack.
The Bartender: The one thing that this job has taught me is that truth is stranger than fiction.
Harold Crick: [to Ana] This may sound like gibberish to you, but I think I'm in a tradgedy.
