A period of time is as much an organising principle for a work of fiction as a sense of place. You can do geography, as Faulkner did, or you can dwell on a particular period. It provides the same framework.
I think the one thing that's changed over time is that I've come to realise, as a fiction writer, the fact that I don't think it will work out, doesn't mean that it actually won't.
I think that there are fiction writers for whom that works well. I could never do it. I feel as if, by the time I see that it's a poem, it's almost written in my head somewhere.
Esmeralda: What is your name? Butch: Butch. Esmeralda: What does it mean? Butch: I'm American, honey. Our names don't mean shit.
Butch: I think I cracked a rib. Fabienne: Giving me oral pleasure? Butch: No, retard, from the fight.
[last lines] Vincent: I think we should be leaving now. Jules: Yeah, that's probably a good idea.
Lance: Are you calling me on the cellular phone? I don't know you. Who is this? Don't come here, I'm hanging up the phone! Prank caller, prank caller!
Vincent: Jules, if you give that fuckin' nimrod fifteen hundred dollars, I'm gonna shoot him on general principles.
Vincent: [to Marvin] Why the fuck didn't you tell us somebody was in the bathroom? Slipped your mind? Did you forget that somebody was in there with a goddamn hand cannon?
Butch: Where's my watch? Fabienne: It's there. Butch: No it's not. Fabienne: It should be. Butch: Yes, it most definitely should be but it's not here now, so where the fuck is it?
Man #4: [Burst out of the bathroom with his gun] Die you motherfuckers! [He empties his entire gun, hitting nothing but air]
Jules: Whether or not what we experienced was an According to Hoyle miracle is insignificant. What is significant is that I felt the touch of God. God got involved.
Mia: [after snorting what she thinks is coke; it's heroin] I said God Damn! God Damn... [whispering] Mia: ...God damn... [passes out]
My first novel took almost six years to sell and was rejected 37 times in the interim, and then finally sold for the smallest amount of money my literary agent had ever negotiated for a work of fiction.
I'm a failed poet. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative language, which goes against the trend in fiction.
When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.
I took a couple of creative writing classes with Joyce Carol Oates at Princeton University, and in my senior year there, I took a long fiction workshop with Toni Morrison. I fell in love with it.
It's no secret - I love detective fiction. One of the reasons I love being in London is because I like to watch all the shows on TV. I watch them all.
I was digging for stuff in a used bookstore, and I came upon 'Little Sister.' I fell in love with Chandler that night. I fell right down the rabbit hole of crime fiction.
Author's Note: The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Especially you Jenny Beckman. Bitch.
There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.
