Philosophical Fiction Quotes & Sayings

To talk nonsense in one's own way is almost better than to talk a truth that's someone else's — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Their books are also different. Works of fiction contain a single plot, with all its imaginable permutations. Those of a philosophical nature invariably include both the thesis and the antithesis, the rigorous pro and con of a doctrine. A book which does not contain its counterbook is considered incomplete. — Jorge Luis Borges

Some major writers have a huge impact, like Ayn Rand, who to my mind is a lousy fiction writer because her writing has no compassion and virtually no humor. She has a philosophical and economical message that she is passing off as fiction, but it really isn't fiction at all. — Theodore Sturgeon

The world is a peaceful place.
We make it hateful by forgetting our grace. — Debasish Mridha

[The Void Which Binds] actual but unaccessible presence in our universe is one of the prime causes for our species elaborating myth and religion, for our stubborn, blind belief in extrasensory powers, in telepathy and precognition, in demons and demigods and resurrection and reincarnation and ghosts and messiahs and so many other categories of almost-but-not-quite satisfying bullshit. — Dan Simmons

Like billiard balls colliding our courses were altered. — Linda Collison

The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change.
"A Clockwork Orange Resucked" intro to first full American version 1986 — Anthony Burgess

The fears and doubts I have are so real, so are they really as childish and silly as you always say they are. — Lynette Ferreira

I should have known the power-hungry slave drivers at River's Edge would see my five days of freedom only as a challenge to be filled. — Cate Tiernan

Don't look up to people, don't be someone's following.
Now a days everything you see is just a lie,
Instead be the person you want to follow. — Akash Lakhotia

You can dance.
You can make me laugh.
You've got x-ray eyes.

You know how to sing.
You're a diplomat.
You've got it all.
Everybody loves you.

You can charm the birds out of the sky, But I, I've got
one thing.

You always know just what to say
And when to go,
But I've got one thing.

You can see in the dark,
But I've got one thing:
I loved you better.

Last night I woke up,
Saw this angel.
He flew in my window.
And he said,
Girl, pretty proud of yourself, huh?" And I looked around and said,
Who me?"
And he said, "The higher you fly, the faster you fall."

He said, "Send it up.
Watch it rise.
See it fall,
Gravity's rainbow.
Send it up.
Watch it rise.
See it fall,
Gravity's Angel. — Laurie Anderson

A work of art can start you thinking about some aesthetic or philosophical problem; it can suggest some new method, some fresh approach to fiction. — Francine Prose

No one can steal your freedom from you. You can only give it away. — Bella James

I use biography, I use literary connections (as with Platen - this seems to me extremely helpful for appreciating the nuances of Mann's and Aschenbach's sexuality), I use philosophical sources (but not in the way many Mann critics do, where the philosophical theses and concepts seem to be counters to be pushed around rather than ideas to be probed), and I use juxtapositions with other literary works (including Mann's other fiction) and with works of music. — Philip Kitcher

It's been a long time since humans were prey animals. A hundred thousand years or so. But buried deep in our genes the memory remains: the awareness of the gazelle, the instinct of the antelope. The wind whispers through the grass. A shadow flits between the trees. And up speaks the little voice that goes. Shhhh, it's close now. Close. — Rick Yancey

I am not a fiction reader. If I already do, I read fiction always more like the illustration of a philosophical-political thesis than a novel. My preference is history. If one does not know history, he is condemned to relive it. — Louis Tobback

Such is the great nature of man, it resides the true face beneath a glittering masquerade. — K. Hari Kumar

Reading was a huge part of my life as a child - we were a family of storytellers. — Sue Monk Kidd

Am Anfang war Gott? It may have been true, but it was not germane. — Stephen Craig

The vibrations he felt in his sleep had nothing to do with his soul easing out of his body as he dreamily thought; they came solely from the weight and motion of the freight train rolling north to deliver fuel, furniture and other items having no relevance to Elijah's life or his dreaming. On the metal rail his arm itched like a nose with a feeling that something bad was about to happen. In another life the sound of the train would have been reminiscent of certain songs by Muddy Waters or even Bruce Springsteen but not in this one. In this life the sound stabbed viciously against the night exactly like a human being demonstrating flawless disrespect for the life of another human being.
from short story ELIJAH'S SKIN — Aberjhani

One man, knows already is referred to that only one man who don't know it to find out - all through the deplorable cause, everybody must have copies, over and over again, of everything that has accumulated about it in the way of cartloads of papers (or must pay for them without having them, which is the usual course, for nobody wants them) and must go down the middle and up again through such an infernal country-dance of costs and fees and nonsense and corruption as was never dreamed of in the wildest visions of a witch's Sabbath. — Charles Dickens

Never try to outgrow the people who were helping you walk,
when you could not even walk. — Akash Lakhotia

I'm not a sociologist, and the novel has often concerned itself with sociology. It's one of the generating forces that's made fiction interesting to people. But that's not my concern. I'm interested in psychology. And also certain philosophical questions about the world. — Jonathan Lethem

Marriages are much more likely to succeed when the couple experiences a 5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative interactions whereas when the ratio approaches 1 to 1, marriages are more likely to end in divorce. — John M. Gottman

So, when I write a piece of fiction I select my characters and settings and so on because they have a bearing, at least to me, on the old unanswerable philosophical questions. And as I spin out the action, I'm always very concerned with springing discoveries
actual philosophical discoveries. But at the same time I'm concerned
and finally more concerned
with what the discoveries do to the character who makes them, and to the people around him. It's that that makes me not really a philosopher, but a novelist. — John Gardner

The man who has ceased to fear has ceased to care. — F.H. Bradley

If some people read my fiction and see it as fundamentally about philosophical ideas, what it probably means is that these are pieces where the characters are not as alive and interesting as I meant them to be. — David Foster Wallace

And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth's centre. — George Orwell

And now they say my heart is failing. The doctor used the term "angina pectoris," which has a theological sound, like misericordia. — Marilynne Robinson

Science fiction in particular is often assumed to be about the future, or about some abstract technological or philosophical idea, or just about 'adventure,' but writers can't build worlds out of nothing. We use bits and pieces of the real world to assemble our fictional ones. — Ann Leckie

The difference between an achiever and a loser is,
An achiever never gives up, never settles and lastly never forgets. — Akash Lakhotia

Regret is a toxin that I try not to allow in my body. — Ellen Burstyn

Time in the most powerful thing.
Not money, not power, not hope.
A person can have everything they
desire but without time they are,
all useless. — Akash Lakhotia

When I went to Everest, I underestimated things. I just didn't know what altitude could do. Or the cold - I especially didn't appreciate the cold. It can be just debilitating, and things can happen so quickly. — Jon Krakauer

But in spacious, vigorous story-telling, in the use of an historical framework, in the relating of human events to a larger philosophical and spiritual context, in the deployment of fiction as a social and political weapon, in the exultation of 'the people' as a supreme authority, in the treatment of suffering as a dominant theme--in all these matters Hugo exerted a profound influence on Tolstoy. — Peter Washington

The future. Space travel, or cosmology. Alternate universes. Time travel. Robots. Marvelous inventions. Immortality. Catastrophes. Aliens. Superman. Other dimensions. Inner space, or the psyche. These are the ideas that are essential to science fiction. The phenomena change, the basic ideas do not. These ideas are the same philosophical concepts that have intrigued mankind throughout history. — Kate Wilhelm

If there is a widely shared concept of intentional action ... a philosophical analysis of intentional action that is wholly unconstrained by that concept runs the risk of having nothing more than a philosophical fiction as its subject matter. — Alfred Mele

Whole life is a search for beauty. But, when the beauty is found inside, the search ends and a beautiful journey begins. — Harshit Walia

I've interrupted a party. Is it in celebration of the peace or in honor of the next war? — Winston Graham

As is so often the case with pieces that appear in the Onion, I honestly could not decide whether this was a clever hoax or not - the arguments were almost exactly as stupid as the real thing. — Christopher Hitchens

When you hit thirty-five or forty, you know on one level that you are no longer the physical specimen you once were. — Harlan Coben

Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know. — Ted Chiang