Fiction Quotes · Page 39

What I hate in fiction is when the author knows better than the characters what they should do.

— Pat Barker

Fiction is a sort of inter-human magic, allowing you to travel into a scene and feel it tingle on your skin.

— Barbara Kingsolver

“Writing fiction feels like an adventurous act, nudging aside reality a word at a time.”

— James Van Pelt

Collins masterfully blends fact and fiction...transcends the historical thriller.

— Jeffery Deaver

“Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us. -Paul Theroux, novelist (b. 1941)”

— Paul Theroux

“Imagine, pretend, and play so you can become anyone you want to be. You don't need to be afraid.”

— Carolyn Byers Ruch

“our destinies are intertwined like the stems of ivy on an oak tree.”

— Chris Tinniswood

“Fiction, however, sometimes ensures disappointment with reality”

— Miguel Syjuco

You really have to soak up the culture of the people to get it right. If you're making a fiction film, it's…

— Robert Duvall

“I took one of my hands in the other, tried to imagine what it would feel like if it was another person's…

— Gail Honeyman

“We want to believe that this life is longer than it is, but in the grand scheme of the universe our existence…

— Paul S. Anderson

I got to spend all of my time every day at work reading and editing papers about cutting-edge technical research and getting…

— Kevin J. Anderson

“...all I knew were novels. It gave me pause, for a moment, that all my reference points were fiction, that all my…

— Rebecca Makkai

“I blinked at him just casually talking about my new sex life with his genie-shiny head, and I knew at any second…

— Laura Kreitzer

“Tightening his embrace around his wife and little Theo, he vowed, "I will do everything in my power to continue being worthy…

— Therisa Peimer

Fantasy and science fiction can be literal as well as allegorical and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a monster like a giant…

— China Mieville

I have long admired the visceral storytelling and moral complexity of John Vaillant’s brilliant non-fiction about humankind’s tragically ambivalent relationship with the…

— John Burnham Schwartz

The first piece of 'long' fiction I wrote was a novella parody of Stephen King's 'Christine.' I was in high school, and…

— Kelley Armstrong

Fiction is very greedy. It will take all you know and then some. The first novel I tried to write, I was…

— John Updike

As we grow older we become more conscious of the complexity, incoherence, and unreasonableness of human beings; this indeed is the only…

— W. Somerset Maugham

[VIA DOLOROSA]'s pushing Broadway as far as it can be pushed. I stand before you as a reporter, and you have to…

— David Hare

I often use detective elements in my books. I love detective novels. But I also think science fiction and detective stories are…

— Sergei Lukyanenko

To me, grey is the welcome and only possible equivalent for indifference, noncommitment, absence of opinion, absence of shape. But grey, like…

— Gerhard Richter

That's really what SF is all about, you know: the big reality that pervades the real world we live in: the reality…

— Frederik Pohl

The possibilities in sci-fi are wonderful. The subject is bigger than everything we know.

— Joel Gretsch

“I had a lump in my throat the size of a bundt cake pan.”

— Jessica Soffer

“If a woman were elected president, would our nation expect her husband to be the official White House host?”

— Venita Ellick

“life rarely finds its exact likeness in a novel, that is hardly fiction’s purpose,”

— Katie Kitamura

I only read biographies, metaphysics and psychology. I can dream up my own fiction.

— Mae West

The art of fiction is freedom of will for your characters.

— Cynthia Ozick

I'm not actually that bothered about the 'science fiction-ness' of 'Doctor Who.'

— Alastair Reynolds

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

— Oscar Wilde

“I gave up worrying about the principles of fiction writing when I realized that there weren't any.”

— Teri Louise Kelly

“But there are times, I would argue, when fiction delivers the greater truth.”

— Leslie Cockburn

“Nonsense, this is my home and I must defend it. It’s time for Santa to get serious.”

— Michael Diack

“You look like shit.” “Thanks. I look way better than I feel.”

— J.T. Lawrence

I'm much more drawn to fiction, to short stories, and to plays, than I am to diarists.

— Regina Spektor

A lot of books in the self-help section of your bookstore really belong in the fiction section.

— Steve Maraboli

Science Fiction has always been and will always be a fable teacher of morality.

— Ray Bradbury

The nature of fiction is to make one distrustful of any character who lectures and castigates.

— James Lasdun