Autobiographical Fiction Quotes

#1. I don't think there's such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

Maya Angelou

#2. Reading the several thousand pages of Christopher Isherwood's complete journals is an instructive corrective to the prissiness of reading fiction. Isherwood had faults that we'd say were unforgiveable in a novel (he was careful to distance himself from these in his autobiographical fiction).

Edmund White

#3. I don't view my memory as accurate or static - and, in autobiographical fiction, my focus is still on creating an effect, not on documenting reality - so 'autobiographical,' to me, is closer in meaning to 'fiction' than 'autobiography.'

Tao Lin

#4. We can study files for decades, but every so often we are tempted to throw up our hands and declare that history is merely another literary genre: the past is autobiographical fiction pretending to be a parliamentary report.

Julian Barnes

#5. It is so common to write autobiographical fiction in which your own experience is thinly disguised.

David Leavitt

#6. If America has a future, Jazz has a future. The two are inseparable.

George Russell

#7. The fiction is not autobiographical. Maybe to some extent it is, of course.

Paul Auster

#8. You can't hide behind the guise of fiction. No matter how autobiographical a fictional scene is, you can always tell the reader - in protecting yourself - that you made it up.

Rob Roberge

#9. Thought about having one last kiss, but in the end the only way she could leave was to walk away without looking back.

Sarra Manning

#10. You can always tell how a man will treat his wife by the way he treats his mother.

Janette Rallison

#11. It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.

William Thomas Ellis

#12. Wisdom is not guaranteed with age but is realized through one's sensitivity to humanity and the universe

I. Alan Appt

#13. A great danger, or at least a great temptation, for many writers is to become too autobiographical in their approach to their fiction. A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.

Raymond Carver

#14. Every word is autobiographical, and every word is fiction.

William S. Burroughs

#15. To be a great achiever you must have a desire, a will to live and determination to push through no matter what.

Euginia Herlihy

#16. The feeling of being an outsider, and the identity theme, are hardwired into me. If there's anything really autobiographical in my fiction, it's that feeling. I always feel that way.

Dan Chaon

#17. It's the truth, though rarely admitted, that every autobiographical work has a touch of fiction and every fiction has a touch of autobiography.

Santosh Kumar Das

#18. All fiction becomes autobiographical when the author has true talent.

Jeanne Moreau

#19. In the broad sense, as a processing of everything one hears or witnesses, all fiction is autobiographical - imagination ground through the mill of memory. It's impossible to separate the two ingredients.

Rohinton Mistry

#20. There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.

Donald Barthelme

#21. The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I'm talking about myself very directly.

Paul Auster

#22. But she's a redhead, so she's probably evil, even at her tender age."
"I thought you liked redheads."
"I do. What's your point?

Christopher Moore

#23. I don't write non-fiction because I get bored. Some of my writing is autobiographical, but not the way readers imagine. I use my memory of settings, events and people. I weave history into my stories, but my narratives are made up.

Sefi Atta

#24. There are times when I myself no longer know whether I said and did the things I report or whether I dreamed them up. Anyway, I always dream true. If I lie a bit now and then it is mainly in the interest of truth.

Henry Miller

#25. Life is bendable to our will more than we know. In fact, that's the deal. If we don't know that life bends to our will, it will not. So the trick is to know that life is on our side
and but awaits our command.

Neale Donald Walsch

#26. I could use some help with an FTA.
What's your problem?
He's old, and I'll look like a loser if I shoot him.

Janet Evanovich

#27. Habit is the strongest thing in life.

Jack Black

#28. For the past five thousand years, people have been largely enslaved by a few select masters who understood how violence, religion, communication, debt, and class warfare all work together to subjugate a large group of people.

James Altucher

#29. All fiction is autobiographical fantasy.

James Joyce

#30. All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.

P.D. James

#31. you have sadness living in places sadness shouldn't live

Rupi Kaur

#32. I think I had actually served my apprenticeship as a writer of fiction by writing all those songs. I had already been through phases of autobiographical or experimental stuff.

Kazuo Ishiguro

#33. You can look at my autobiographical pieces as source books ... But, you see, my fiction doesn't revolve around autobiographical questions.

Paul Auster

#34. I use my fiction to explore my own unconscious issues. I usually don't even know what's going on with me until I'm writing. That doesn't mean my books are autobiographical.

Janet Fitch

#35. For the courage to write above myself;
For the guts to shout down the Critic within;
Fir the willingness to release the past, the future,
I thank You, that which Inspires.

Catherine W. Scott

#36. Sex sells & the small print will kill you

Phillip McCarron

#37. Theology, like fiction, is largely autobiographical.

Frederick Buechner

#38. I was not what you'd call a first-class actor, but I did all right.

Elia Kazan

#39. Everything is autobiographical, and nothing is autobiographical. That's fiction.

Lisa Unger