It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

The novelist is required to create the illusion of a whole world with believable people in it, and the chief difference between the novelist who is an orthodox Christian and the novelist who is merely a naturalist is that the Christian novelist lives in a larger universe. He believes that the natural world contains the supernatural. And this doesn't mean that his obligation to portray the natural is less; it means it is greater.

Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.

I'm not a science fiction writer, I'm a physicist.

Fiction is nothing but non-fiction couched to conceal the identity of the writer.