Lauren Groff Writing Quotations

At least in my case, a very simple, regular, happy life makes for better writing.

A lot of my work comes from a place of despair or fear. I often write in order to gain some sort of control over aspects of my life or the world that seem too dark to look at directly.

Fiction is always a utopian task, in that there's an ideal you hold in your head as you write which inevitably fails in the moment of creation, in the insufficiency of words to convey meaning, or in the way the work is completed in the reader's head.

I love writing from enclosed spaces: you really learn about your characters when they have tight walls to push against.

When I write new worlds, I work in layers, building and throwing out, and building anew.

Writing is the lonely sport of sad sacks.

The triumph of writing fiction is that by doing so, writers can build a more ideal world in themselves.

It's wonderful that nothing you write is ever going to be as beautiful as what's in your head, because that gap is where the art can enter and begin to stretch its limbs.

In terms of writing, I think what most fiction writers treasure more than anything is the feeling that they're living for the length of a book inside another person.

While writing, writers are living inside a character or characters, and when the book ekes into the world, writers are living inside the reader. That's more than connecting.

In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies.