Quotes & Sayings About Fiction

When I am writing political op-eds, I do think carefully about the impact of my words. When I am writing fiction, it's a different story. In my fiction I am more reckless. I don't care about the real world until I am done with the book. — Elif Safak

Meanwhile, however, what's most bothersome about Pulp Fiction is its success. This is not to be mean-spirited about Tarantino himself; may he harvest all the available millions. But the way that this picture has been so widely ravened up and drooled over verges on the disgusting. Pulp Fiction nourishes, abets, cultural slumming. — Stanley Kauffmann

For some the label sci-fi is just a shortand for science fiction, an alternative to sf gesturing at ... you know, that stuff we like. — Hal Duncan

All that I was and the world that was mine are gone forever. — Jenny Lloyd

Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That's it. That's my heart. — Haruki Murakami

Why do you want to touch me? I'm nothing. I'm no one. — T.M. Frazier

I did not fear that I might tread upon a live rail and be killed. I feared something far more intangible-doing what was not contemplated by the Machine. Then I said to myself, "Man is the measure", and I went, and after many visits I found an opening. — E. M. Forster

A writer can't just be well-educated or good at research; to build a living, breathing world with interesting characters, you have to write from the gut. I'm not saying you have to live your life like a fantasy adventure. The trick is the ability to synthesize your own everyday experiences into your fiction. Infuse your characters with believable emotions and motivations. Infuse your world with rich sensory detail. For that you have to be in touch with your own existence and your own soul, the dark and the light of it. — Lynn Flewelling

Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning. — Dorothy Allison

At thirteen, Noboru was convinced of his own genius (each of the others in the gang felt the same way) and certain that life consisted of a few simple signals and decisions; that death took root at the moment of birth and man's only recourse thereafter was to water and tend it; that propagation was a fiction; consequently, society was a fiction too: that fathers and teachers, by virtue of being fathers and teachers, were guilty of a grievous sin. Therefore, his own father's death, when he was eight, had been a happy incident, something to be proud of. — Yukio Mishima

I am German, yes, but I am not a Nazi. There is a difference, and one day I hope you understand that. — Caroline Leech

You can suck the life out of someone without ever touching a drop of their blood.
Raphael Sinclair — Helen Maryles Shankman

I wrote the very first stories in science fiction which dealt with homosexuality, The World Well Lost and Affair With a Green Monkey. — Theodore Sturgeon

The world is full of sluts on skates. From Penn-warren's "All the Kings Men. — Martha Miller

Miriva refused to believe that human decency should be a privilege given only to a small few, and when she complained to her mother that she did not want to be a broodmare for the sake of alliances between the villages, her mother slapped her and sent her to the fields to pick mehazi beans — Ash Gray

Do remember, though, that unless you're a playwright, the result [dialogue] isn't what you want; it's only an element of what you want. Actors embody and re-create the words of drama. In fiction, a tremendous amount of story and character may be given through the dialogue, but the story-world and its people have to be created by the storyteller. If there's nothing in it but disembodied voices, too much is missing. — Ursula K. Le Guin

They say it's always darkest before the dawn and it was pitch black by the time I arrived at the Marriott. However I still had a few bullets left for my deadbeat uncle that tried to stab me in the back. — Angel Ramon Medina

It can be hard to write a skillfully entertaining fiction, but a great book wants to be more, and wants more from us. — Guy Gavriel Kay

I will put my hook in thy nose and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way which thou camest. 'Destroyer' thou hast embraced, and Abaddon shalt thou be. From the furnace of the Kiln wast thou taken and to the furnace of Hell shalt thou return. — Donovan M. Neal

To get here had been painful, but for once in my life I felt free. — Sarah Swainson

Shadowchild! - Don't let her get in your head! — Matthew Williams

Workshop Hermeticism, fiction for which the highest praise involves the words 'competent,' 'finished,' 'problem-free,' fiction over which Writing-Program pre- and proscriptions loom with the enclosing force of horizons: no character without Freudian trauma in accessible past, without near-diagnostic physical description; no image undissolved into regulation Updikean metaphor; no overture without a dramatized scene to 'show' what's 'told'; no denouement prior to an epiphany whose approach can be charted by and Freitag on any Macintosh. — David Foster Wallace

Physics is often stranger than science fiction, and I think science fiction takes its cues from physics: higher dimensions, wormholes, the warping of space and time, stuff like that. — Michio Kaku

Her eyes were a rich dark brown that were so deep, they reminded me of my sleepless nights, awake, staring into complete darkness. I felt compelled to look deeper, searching for something inside her, but her soul was covered and her eyes would not show me. — Cristina Martin

This isn't food." Bram picked up a lavender-iced cake between thumb and finger and stared at it. "This is ... edible ornamentation. — Tessa Dare

I am a survivor. But I am not unique of the people that survived the great late war. We all have our stories to tell. But for most of us the hardened corners have soften with the passage of time. — Nancy B. Brewer

Think of my movies as heightening our awareness, not confusing the difference between truth and fiction, but heightening our awareness of how confused we can become about what is real. — Errol Morris

I think what people really want is fiction that in some tiny way makes their life more meaningful and makes the world seem like a richer place. The world is awfully short on joy and richness, and I think to some extent it's the fiction writer's job to salvage some of that and to give it to us in ways that we can believe in. — Wells Tower

He ran his hand from my wrist up to the crook of my elbow and then to my shoulder. "When I was a little kid, my dad would come to my room at night to say a prayer with me. He used to say, 'Lord, We know there's a little girl out there who's meant for Henry. Please protect her and raise her up right.'" His voice changed to something slower and more country when he mimicked his dad. He smiled at the memory, and then he put his mouth near my ear and whispered. "You were that little girl. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Because there wasn't anything else to do, he settled at the kitchen table
with a bottle of mead and nearly emptied it. The anesthetic effect he hoped for hadn't happened, though. At least not yet. — Ann Gimpel

In fiction workshops, we tend to focus on matters of verisimilitude largely because such issues are so much easier to talk about than the failure of imagination. — Tim O'Brien

As insane as his request sounded to her, the fact that he already saw her nakedness the day before made her calm down a little. "He even covered my nakedness and gifted me with a beautiful dress," she thought to herself. He held her hand and led her to the Nile river's shore. He let go and stood back watching her. — Mirette Baghat

I read a lot of short fiction, like Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Carver and Wells Tower. — Lorde

Chemistry's a tricky thing, and if I'm not feeling it, I'm not gonna pretend. — Faith Sullivan

The president already has a Nobel Prize for peace. I think he's shooting for one in fiction. — Trey Gowdy

And Vicky also told her sister that all girls at the Health Centre considered that men were born crazy, if not down-right stupid.They were prepared to do crazy things & pay high prices just to prove how "macho" they were, when it came to young pretty girls. And the sisters tittered with laughter at the thought of the old men who enjoyed drinking Phyllis' urine & the young men who ate cucumber sandwiches filled with her excrement. And thus Vicky told Phyllis that although one should not take candy off children, it was quite in order to take money off crazy & stupid rich men.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon. — Victor Hugo

Regrets are about decisions that you know you should have done different. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Self-growth does not always mean that we've changed. It means that we've stopped listening to what others say we 'ought' to be doing and finally live our lives according to our own values. — Anthea Syrokou

The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction. — Thomas Huxley

Science fiction is about worlds you don't know and worlds you can create, like in 'Avatar'. — Paul Verhoeven

Mistakes? That's why they put erasers on pencils. — Rick Barnett

All stories are true. But some of them never happened. — James A. Owen

Uh, got into a fight with the kitchen or something?" he asked, smirking.
I ran my hands through my hair and felt remains of the fruit as I did and cringed. Well, this must be attractive. I motioned for him to come into the living room and shut the door behind him.
"Something like that," I replied coolly.
He walked past me and went to the kitchen, probably to get a better look. "Well, I see you won. The fruit won't be going anywhere anytime soon. Maybe the apples. Those look like they need some more killing. — Christie Cote

Lucifer endears himself to us only as the Lord of Lies, for in this role he is most convincing as a character, which is to say, as a fiction that has been so fully realized that he misguides us with a false feeling of our own reality because we are the ones who made him: he is subordinate to us, especially in the art of lying. For the acephalics among us who have said that the Devil's greatest trick was convincing the world that he did not exist, it must be said back: if he did not exist, then neither would we. — Thomas Ligotti

Read Mann's notes, which contain precise accounts of cholera and its symptoms, and observe how careful he is throughout his fiction in getting medical details straight - then you might begin to wonder whether cholera is the only candidate for the cause of Aschenbach's death. What results from this, I think, is a deeper appreciation of Mann's brilliance in keeping so many possibilities in play. The ambiguity is even more artful than people have realized. — Philip Kitcher

When I was starting out, science fiction was a little genre over there, which only a few people read. But now
where are you going to put, for example, Salman Rushdie? Or any of the South American writers? Most people get by calling them magical realists. — Doris Lessing

As the years progress and we experience more and more, the mini-narratives that make up our lives are distorted, corrupted, so that every one of us is left with a false history, a self-created fiction about the live we have led. pg 163 — Michelle Richmond

Write about the thing that scares you most or your most private confession and you'll never have a problem coming up with decent fiction. — Don Roff

It's a tough world to find yourself in, but an even tougher one to be yourself in — Chris Colfer

I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children. — Eleanor Catton

Her heavy breathing echoed off the thick walls, her body frozen in shock, but when Marik reappeared in the mouth of the cave, she reached for the sword. He was still in a state of bloodlust and was, what she could only describe as, stalking her. — Kiersten Fay

Perhaps you have visited my grave and flowers left, but did you hear me cry out to you! — Nancy B. Brewer

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction. — William Faulkner

When it comes to creating compelling fiction, the devil may be in the details, but it is your imagination that ultimately allows your work to spread its wings and take flight. And fly it must. Only by soaring above the clouds of doubt can one truly achieve a suspension of disbelief — Max Hawthorne

Life might be stranger than fiction, but fiction allows many writers to more accurately portray life to their readers. — Jaime Buckley

I find Japanese books quite baffling when I read them in translation. It's only with Haruki Murakami that I find Japanse fiction that I can understand and relate to. He's a very international writer. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Culture is the best society has to offer...How can we pass on civilization to those who do not value civilization. (Terrence Rattigan) — Beth Fine

Her armpits were still slightly wet & she examined them one by one. No hair. This was one of her greatest assets over her sister who had underarm hair.Her slender arms & long legs were also free of hair. She had only a little bit of pubic hair, she noticed. It must be terrible to have lots of ugly underarm & thick coarse arm & leg hairs that you had to shave off daily, she thought. A bit more pubic hair, she wouldn't mind, she decided. But they tended to tickle men's nostrils & make them sneeze.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

Hi, I have just added my new novel, "Incessant Expectations" for your reading enjoyment. It is about commercial salmon fishing on the Oregon coast circa 1976. It is fiction. The industry doesn't exist anymore. A young farmer from the dry country in Southwestern Colorado visits the wet Northwestern Oregon coast, seeking a summer job after his dad's farm is sold in the spring. He has spent his first 22 years in isolation, doing hard labor on the family farm. He knows hard work but has little social experience. During his summer of 1976 he learns about the ocean, fishing, and women. — Kenneth Fenter

For elves, sex was two souls finding each other in the dark. — Ash Gray

Dutton, the home of Winnie the Pooh, would find a second identity as a home for gay fiction. — Christopher Bram

Cursed the crown that brought such grief to me — J. Leigh Bralick

I've always thought of myself as a realist. I can remember fighting with my professors about it in grad school. The world that I live in consists of 250 advertisements a day and any number of unbelievably entertaining options, most of which are subsidized by corporations that want to sell me things. The whole way that the world acts on my nerve endings is bound up with stuff that the guys with the leather patches on their elbows would consider pop or trivial or ephemeral. I use a fair amount of pop stuff in my fiction, but what I mean by it is nothing different than what other people mean in writing about trees and parks and having to walk to the river to get water 100 years ago. It's just the texture of the world I live in. — David Foster Wallace

The winters were getting colder, starting earlier, lasting longer, with more snows than he could remember from childhood. As soon as man stopped adding his megatons of filth to the atmosphere each day, he thought, the atmosphere had reverted to what it must have been long ago, moister weather summer and winter, more stars than he had ever seen before, and more, it seemed, each night than the night before: the sky a clear, endless blue by day, velvet blue-black at night with blazing stars that modern man had never seen. — Kate Wilhelm

I would ask, 'Have you read '1984'? Have you read 'Brave New World'? If so, I'm sorry, but you read science fiction.' — Carrie Vaughn

At university, I used to write silly little sketches and monologues, but never fiction. — David Nicholls

Journeys become very good metaphors. They always have the character put into circumstances that reveal him. If I had based my characters in New York and had them just sitting and thinking about life, it would be like what contemporary U.S. fiction is about. That is very heavy, literally, for me. It doesn't become mainstream enough because the pages don't turn themselves. — Karan Bajaj

For example, when I was writing Leviathan, which was written both in New York and in Vermont - I think there were two summers in Vermont, in that house I wrote about in Winter Journal, that broken-down house ... I was working in an out-building, a kind of shack, a tumble-down, broken-down mess of a place, and I had a green table. I just thought, "Well, is there a way to bring my life into the fiction I'm writing, will it make a difference?" And the fact is, it doesn't make any difference. It was a kind of experiment which couldn't fail. — Paul Auster

One of the advantages of having gone to Penn State was having had a scholar for a mentor - Philip Young. Also, a professional writer named Philip Klass taught there. He was a science fiction writer whose pseudonym was William Tenn. As a professional writer, he brought wisdom to teaching because he'd done it for a living. — David Morrell

She smiled the most extraordinary smile and Egg knew his life would never be the same again. — Jamie Scallion

You look within and upon and around me, savoring every inch. You pull my ear for no reason, and I can tell you really don't want to cry. As a tear falls between by breasts, I look away and pretend the grass is a jungle, and the ants, little kings of forgotten tribes. — Virginia Petrucci

Now, Venus is an extremely hostile environment, and as such presents a lot of challenges for a science fiction author who wants to create life there. However, as I began to research it more thoroughly, I found myself intrigued by the possibilities the world offers. — Sarah Zettel

I can't recommend technical writing as a day job for fiction writers because it's going to be hard to write all day and then come home and write fiction. — Ted Chiang

The silence was worse than the gunshots. The wait worse than the confusion. The forebode worse
than any danger. — Willowy Whisper

Here's how I'll tell you what I think - if you see white smoke then you know I picked a new pope. And if I'm drinking a Snapple then you know I don't give a shit. — Jason Jack Miller

People recover differently. Some change cities, some fall in love and some begin writing. — Kanza Javed

Verily, a man without fear is either dead or happy to die. — Wayne Gerard Trotman

So when he touched me, it was deeper and slower than the wildfire, like the flow of molten rock far beneath the surface of the earth. Too deep to feel the heat of it, but it moved inexorably, changing the very foundations of the world with its advance. — Stephenie Meyer

Our position as the policing agency within fiction gave us licensed access to abstract technology. One blast from the eraserhead in Bradshaw's rifle and the Minotaur would be reduced to the building blocks of his fictional existence: text and a bluish mist - all that is left when the bonds that link text to meaning are severed. — Jasper Fforde

It's all about the spirit. Every man, woman and child should be seen as a spirit first, before anything else. We are all spirits in the first instance. — Andrew Agbonlahor

I believe the Lord has chosen me to spread His word through my words and who am I to question His plans for me? — Cindy Bauer

The wiry man scratched his head, looked the two inquisitors up and down and cleared his throat softly. "We must be quick." He turned to go, pulling his cloak over his head and shuffling through the door into the moonlight. The two inquisitors moved with impossible silence behind, floating across the straw-covered floor like the cats on the walls outside the hut. The cats froze at the disturbance before scurrying noiselessly into the shadows as the three silhouettes crossed the ten yards of grass before the blackness of the forest swallowed them. No fires flickered at this time, when the full moon was highest in the cloudless summer sky, and the three were the only waking souls in the hamlet. — Gregory Figg

Prisoners!" Finan shouted, and I suspected he was shouting at me because I had so blatantly ignored my own insistence that we take men captive. — Bernard Cornwell

Vicky had once told her that she should not be ashamed of her pubic hair. Pubic hair was what men expected to see on women. Vicky said that there was a young prostitute at the Centre who had no pubic hair & many customers were known to shy off her because they thought that she was diseased. So Phyllis was resigned to displaying her pubic hair to all who wanted to see it.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

My book group has one rule: no books for adults. We read young adult fiction only. — Lev Grossman

Sylvia Day delivers readers to a fantasy world as unique as it is erotic! Ms. Day is an up-and-coming talent in the world of erotic fiction. [on Pleasures of the Night ] — Toni Blake

Love itself is the most elitist of passions. It acquires its stereoscopic substance and perspective only in the context of culture, for it takes up more place in the mind than it does in bed. Outside of that setting it falls flat into one-dimensional fiction. — Joseph Brodsky

Her heart fluttered. It had only been a few hours, but it felt like a lifetime since she saw him last. She seriously felt addicted to that boy. — Julia Crane

It's about time! It's supposed to be a ritual, not a marathon. — Karen Chance

Secret Saturdays ought to be required reading at middle schools everywhere. Maldonado gives us both voice and heart. His young characters navigate a challenging world with endearing earnestness, lively style, and a heartening desire for true friendship and dignity. — E.R. Frank

Past memories strobed before him, flashes of joy blackened by the present. Reality teased, then beckoned, home likewise. Confusion dimmed, the answer clear. This could end. Would end. In one of two ways.
Still he refused, not ready for either. — Marcha A. Fox

They're good, these stories," Mace continued, his cheeks stained with light color. "They teach the pain of others." "Empathy. Carlin always said it was the great value of fiction, to put us inside the minds of strangers. — Erika Johansen

Magic is magic as long as humans can explain it logically! — Asse Sauga

I retreat into my fictional world where everything makes sense - but even there I can't even control what people do ... — John Geddes

Honey, you worry too much. Nothing is going to happen, I mean come on, you're in the house of Mr. Hausefalle, the guru of home security! You're probably safer over there than here.- House Trap, ch. 4: A Grave Mistake. — Mike Mauthor

I like certain subgenres within science fiction and fantasy, and one of those is urban fantasy, and another is steampunk. — Gail Carriger

I believe that if it were possible to scrap the whole of existing literature, all writers would find themselves inevitably producing something very close to SF ... No other form of fiction has the vocabulary of ideas and images to deal with the present, let alone the future. — J.G. Ballard

In a fairy tale, the story can't be altered. The prince and princess will never have a fight. You'll never hear the queen raise her voice. No on ever gets sick; no one ever gets hurt. Maybe love is only safe in places where it can't change. — Jodi Picoult

By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives realistically portrayed. — Gore Vidal