Fiction always reveals a lot about the person who is writing it. That's the scary thing. Not in … - Katie Kitamura

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Our Creator has put in us hungers that this earth can- not satisfy. We cannot be completely self-contained on earth. Physical sense cannot give us a full life, nor can knowledge alone. No life is full unless it is linked to some- thing that goes on after we are dead. . . . If we have nothing more to live for than just to get ahead in a competitive system, then democracy will go down before other philosophies.

Katie Kitamura

Fiction always reveals a lot about the person who is writing it. That's the scary thing. Not in a straightforward autobiographical sense. But the flaws in a piece of fiction are, unhappily, so often also the flaws of the writer.

Fiction, Flaws, Scary, Sense, Writer, Writing

Same Author Quotes

There's a perception that good writing is writing which runs smoothly. But smooth-running prose can work against what you're trying to express in a novel.

Express, Perception, Running, Writing

I believe writers should be able to write about anything - anything - but there is also a sense in which your lived experience shapes what you write and what you don't write.

Believe, I Believe, Sense, Write, Writers, Writing

When I receive a box of my books, my impulse is to hide rather than display them. It always makes me very anxious that they send so many copies, because I have to think of lots of different places to hide them.

Book, Different, Display, Places, Receive, Thinking

It's a hard thing to examine and difficult to speak for other writers, but when I look at my own writing there is often too much reticence. And that's a flaw I have as a person as well. I'm too reticent. I'm non-confrontational to a fault. And I'm risk-averse, which probably shows in my sentences. The aversion to long lines, the tendency to strip things back and be spare. My writing is an act of erasure that's tied up with my personality. I can easily produce a ninety thousand word chunk of writing and then cut back and back until I've only got ten thousand words. Or nothing.

Cutting, Fault, Long, Personality, Probably, Writing

The desire to be liked is acceptable in real life but very problematic in fiction. Pleasantness is the enemy of good fiction. I try to write on the premise that no one is going to read my work. Because there's this terrible impulse to grovel before the reader, to make them like you, to write with the reader in mind in that way. It prevents you doing work that is ugly or upsetting or difficult. The temptation is to not be true to what you want to write and to be considerate or amusing instead. I'm always trying to fight against the impulse to make my readers like me.

Fighting, Good, Impulse, Mind, Real, Writing