Sarah Zettel Quotes

I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror.

Sarah Zettel

• Fiction
• Written
• Fantasy
• Horror
• Novelist

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Quotes to Explore

• I've been a novelist since 1995 and have had novels in and out of option, and watching that process just made me realize that I have to live by what I teach my students, because I teach screenwriting at Spellman.

  

  Tananarive Due
  • Live
  • Teach
  • Option

• I'd love to do a movie where the monster is human, where the issue is not otherworldly, or horror or science fiction.

  

  J. J. Abrams
  • Science
  • Human
  • Monster

• They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited 'first chapters'. I have indeed written many.

  

  J. R. R. Tolkien
  • Effort
  • First
  • Step

• Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Truth
  • Reality
  • Fiction

• Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form.

  

  Irwin Shaw
  • Try
  • Fiction
  • Short

• Here's the thing, for me at least: this is a huge genre now. It wasn't always so. Not so many years ago, it wasn't so. There is a tremendous diversity in fantasy today.

  

  R. A. Salvatore
  • Diversity
  • Fantasy
  • Genre

• I watched 'Evil Dead' when I was 12. I was going through all the horror I could grab. I remember going to the video store and asking for something 'real.' And the guy gave me the 'Evil Dead' VHS. When you're 12, you're not supposed to see that.

  

  Fede Alvarez
  • Remember
  • Guy
  • Horror

• Fantasy is sort of a blank slate that everybody can project their own culture onto. Everybody can read it in their own way.

  

  D. B. Weiss
  • Culture
  • Way
  • Fantasy

• With epic fantasy, there is a tendency for it to be quintessentially conservative in that its job is to restore what is perceived to be out of whack.

  

  N. K. Jemisin
  • Job
  • Fantasy
  • Conservative

• A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • Work
  • Face
  • Fiction

• I've read every single fantasy novel there is. I mean, I would challenge a lot of people to read more fantasy novels than I have.

  

  Felicia Day
  • People
  • Single
  • Challenge

• When 'Romeo and Juliet' came along, I fell in love with the way that it was written and how innocent and vulnerable it was and how different it was from 'True Grit.' I really liked that.

  

  Hailee Steinfeld
  • True
  • Way
  • Written

• Right from the very beginning, I knew I wanted to write palpably Scottish fiction.

  

  Ian Rankin
  • Beginning
  • Write
  • Fiction

• I'll always love movies. But there's something I love very much about TV, when you shoot episodes while other episodes are still being written.

  

  Karine Vanasse
  • Always
  • Movies
  • Written

• To me, steampunk and urban fantasy are naturally hinged together. And I think that's because I love the early gothic Victorian literature, and both things spring from that movement.

  

  Gail Carriger
  • Literature
  • Movement
  • Fantasy

• Hollywood wants to go for the flash, because that's what a lot of them think science fiction is.

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • Think
  • Science
  • Fiction

• There are the horror fans that love the 'Evil Dead' because of the humor, but I'm sure it's not all of them. Not all horror fans love 'Evil Dead' because of the humor, at least not me.

  

  Fede Alvarez
  • Evil
  • Fans
  • Humor

• Wizards was my homage to Tolkien in the American idiom. I had read Tolkien, understood Tolkien, and wanted to do a sort of fantasy for American kids, and that was Wizards.

  

  Ralph Bakshi
  • Kids
  • American
  • Fantasy

• If there were a better, clearer, shorter way of saying what the fiction says, then why not scrap the fiction?

  

  J. M. Coetzee
  • Why
  • Better
  • Fiction

• All my novels are very much directly related to my inner life, even though I'm inventing characters, even though it's fiction, even though it's make-believe, it nevertheless is coming out of the deepest recesses of myself.

  

  Paul Auster
  • Believe
  • Character
  • Fiction

• Academic writing you have to get right. Fiction you have to get plausible. And there's a world of difference. In a way, if someone says this didn't feel exactly right, I don't care. But that is not okay to do in academia - it's not about feeling. You want to establish a pretty solid case. So did this allow me to express things differently? Absolutely. Another thing I've been thinking about as an academic: our writing style is expository, and in fiction, withholding information matters quite a bit. Withholding things in academia - there's no place for that!

  

  Elliott Colla
  • Writing
  • Information
  • Fiction

• You know you've reached true success the day you become truly humble. That's the day you stop needing to prove to the world - and yourself - that you've accomplished something meaningful.

  

  Naveen Jain
  • World
  • True
  • Success

• I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror.

  

  Sarah Zettel
  • Fiction
  • Written
  • Fantasy