Pastoral Resources

It's never too late - in fiction or in life - to revise.

Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.

I value mothers and motherhood enormously. For every inattentive or abusive mother in my fiction I think you'll find a dozen or so who are neither.

The capacity you're thinking of is imagination; without it there can be no understanding, indeed no fiction.

There is an element of autobiography in all fiction in that pain or distress, or pleasure, is based on the author's own. But in my case that is as far as it goes.

Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything.

I was always attracted to science fiction movies.

If life's lessons could be reduced to single sentences, there would be no need for fiction.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

I don't read other science fiction. I don't read any at all.

But Roy Rockwood, it was science fiction for the sake of science fiction.

Film fixes a precise visual image in the viewer's head. In fiction, you just hope you're precise enough to convey the intended effect.

Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

Do you not see with your own eyes the chrysalis fact assume by degrees the wings of fiction?

Beyond that, I seem to be compelled to write science fiction, rather than fantasy or mysteries or some other genre more likely to climb onto bestseller lists even though I enjoy reading a wide variety of literature, both fiction and nonfiction.

The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors.