Literary Fiction Authors Quotes & Sayings

If our life was perfect ... heaven would be meaningless! — Timothy Pina

Discussions of the effects of serial publication of Victorian novels on their authors and readers1 usually draw attention to the author's peculiar opportunities for cliff-hanging suspense, as, for instance, when Thackeray has Becky Sharp counter old Sir Pitt's marriage proposal at the end of Vanity Fair's fourth number with the revelation
that she is already married, and the reader must wait a month before the husband's identity is revealed. Or it may be pointed out how the author can modify his story in response to his readers' complaints or recommendations, as when Trollope records in his
Autobiography how he wrote Mrs Proudie out of the Barchester Chronicles after overhearing two clergymen in the Athenaeum complaining of his habit of reintroducing the same characters in his fiction. — Ian Gregor

Now when the men talk, their voices burn in the air, making smoke all over the place. We hear about change, about new country, about democracy, about elections and what-what.
They talk and talk, the men, lick their lips and look at the dead watches on their wrists and shake their hands and slap each other and laugh like they have swallowed thunder. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Instead of looking to blame others and the world around us, we should first look within ourselves. This — Dalai Lama XIV

When she was chair of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2010, Daisy Goodwin wrote a controversial essay lamenting the 'unrelenting grimness' of so many novels and pointing out that 'generally great fiction contains light and shade'
not only misery but joy and humor. 'It is time for publishers to stop treating literary fiction as the novelistic equivalent of cod-liver oil: if it's nasty it must be good for you. — Daisy Goodwin

Cambridge is one of the best universities in the world, especially in my field. — Stephen Hawking

Authors of so-called 'literary' fiction insist that action, like plot, is vulgar and unworthy of a true artist. Don't pay any attention to misguided advice of that sort. If you do, you will very likely starve trying to live on your writing income. Besides, the only writers who survive the ages are those who understand the need for action in a novel. — Dean Koontz

In any case how many took the oath and are now licking the toes of the whiteman?No, you take an oath to confirm a choice already made. The decision to lay or not lay your life for the people lies in the heart. The oath is the water sprinkled on a man's head at baptism — Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

Why is a carrot more orange than an orange? — Steven Wright

When authors who write literary fiction begin to write screenplays, everybody assumes that's the end. Here's another who's never going to write well again. — Richard Russo

One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government. — Ron Paul

[Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they're writing it! — Terry Pratchett

I forgave you because I love you and I hate being without you. I hate it, my cat hates it. And because Catarina convinced me I was being stupid. — Cassandra Clare

WONDER WITHOUT WILLPOWER
Love's way becomes a pen sometimes writing g-sounds like gold or r-sounds
like tomorrow in different calligraphy
styles sliding by, darkening the paper
Now it's held upside down, now beside
the head, now down and on to something
else, figuring. One sentence saves
an illustrious man from disaster, but
fame does not matter to the split tongue
of a pen. Hippocrates knows how the cure
must go. His pen does not. This one
I am calling pen, or sometimes flag,
has no mind. You, the pen, are most sanely
insane. You cannot be spoken of rationally.
Opposites are drawn into your presence but
not to be resolved. You are not whole
or ever complete. You are the wonder
without willpower going where you want. — Rumi

When my dad played me 'Walking Man,' I heard those chord changes and that melody, it completely blew me away. Maybe you wouldn't really hear the James Taylor influences in my music, but they're definitely buried in there. — Charlie Puth

Socialism never arises in the earlier phases of capitalism, as, for instance, among the pioneers of civilisation in a country where there is plenty of land available for private appropriation by the last comer. — George Bernard Shaw

If you're not challenged, you'll get bored. — Victor Webster

There is a certain logic to events that pushes you along a certain path. You go along the path that feels the most true, and most according to the principles that are guiding you, and that's the way the decisions are made. — Michael Nesmith

Global warming threatens our health, our economy, our natural resources, and our children's future. It is clear we must act. — Eliot Spitzer

Experience is the only teacher," Hey-Soos says. "Even if I could have told you, it would have been a lecture. Why do you think kids don't listen to their parents, or people don't leave churches and do what the preacher tells them? — Chris Crutcher

New York in a way functions as another character within the story, as it does within most of Woody Allen's stories. — Radha Mitchell

I wish to God I might induce her to mind me!' he ejaculated. — Georgette Heyer

For obvious reasons, the relationship between novelists, the reviewing establishment and critics in general is chronically, and often acutely, edgy. A kind of low-intensity warfare prevails, with outbreaks of savagery. It is partly an ownership issue. Who, other than its creator, is to say what a work of fiction means or is worth? It can take years to write a novel and only a few hours for a critic, or a reviewer rushing for a tight deadline, to trash it. — John Sutherland

My fears are the obvious ones: that marketplace-minded publishers - all four of them - will shy further away from literary fiction, international authors, poetry, and the other marginal but hugely important regions of the book world. — David Edelstein

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten. — Chinua Achebe

How are you supposed to know what to read next? This is the question that keeps us up at night, so at Day One our mission is to feed an audience of literature-hungry, time-constrained readers like you with a weekly lineup of talented authors, poets, and artists that we believe you will love. And if we can identify some of the next generation of literary stars, and cultivate an appreciation for transformative poetry and fiction, then frankly we will sleep better at night. — Carmen Johnson

A lot of young-adult authors, great ones, have tried their hands at literary fiction, and not a lot of them have succeeded. Not even Roald Dahl could switch-hit, and not for lack of trying. — Lev Grossman