Fiction Quotes · Page 36

Academic writing you have to get right. Fiction you have to get plausible. And there's a world of difference.

— Elliott Colla

Don't make a novel to establish a principle of political economy. You will spoil both.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You couldn't wake someone when his own dreams turned out better than reality.”

— Danielle Bennett

What we search for in fiction is not so much reality, but the epiphany of truth.

— Azar Nafisi

Autobiographies tell more lies than all but the most self-indulgent fiction .

— A. S. Byatt

I began writing fiction because it was the only way to tell all the intricacies of a real-life spy story.

— David Ignatius

Science is my territory, but science fiction is the landscape of my dreams.

— Anonymous

For books, I don't read much fiction, but like travel essays and good pop-science.

— Dennis Ritchie

I grew up not reading fiction; I watched movies and read comic books, and one of the ways I taught myself to…

— Kevin Wilson

In 'Out of the Dark,' I'm talking about my own life. I'm not talking as a character or speaking as a character.…

— Nikki Grimes

“Religion and nationalism? I defecate on the altar of religious conviction, and wipe my arse on the flag of national pride.”

— Ian Martin

My favourite all-time work of fiction: Lord of the Rings. My favourite all-time nonfiction book: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Ask me again…

— Orson Scott Card

“What is so addictive about fiction is that it is the one reliable place in which we can apprehend and participate in…

— Rick Gekoski

I confess I didn't read the 'Green Arrow' comics before coming to play Shado. The comic books are not as easily accessible…

— Celina Jade

I do one Xanth novel a year, because at the moment that is all that publishers will accept; they don't want any…

— Piers Anthony

“I was hoping against hope he'd refill his Prozac so we could be in love again, but, sadly, that never happened.”

— Piper Faust

“I also had a father, who had loved for a long time without being nearby. How many others were walking around and…

— Pam Muñoz Ryan

With fiction, I've grown to really love the challenge of lying, the challenge of telling a good tale that isn't truthful, and…

— Kevin Macdonald

I do believe that sci-fi or historical fiction finds an easy home in comics because there are no budget constraints in regards…

— Jonathan Hickman

It's funny because when I was growing up, I was really into science fiction and fantasy as a kid. And, when I…

— John Orloff

“Stop looking for that person you were in the past. She has changed. Look for the person she has grown into. She…

— Chris Pepple

One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature…

— George Saintsbury

“This use of ordinary people as the principal characters was fairly rare in science fiction when the book came out, and even…

— Arkady Strugatsky

Sex can no longer be the germ, the seed of fiction. Sex is an episode, most properly conveyed in an episodic manner,…

— Elizabeth Hardwick

“Now I think I understand how this world can overcome a man.”

— Anonymous

“what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art”

— Vladimir Nabokov

For me, a kitchen is like science fiction. I only go there to open the refrigerator and take something out.

— Ann-Margret

I think it's hard to have a full-time job and write fiction, but for essays, you need to be in the world.

— Sloane Crosley

I'm a believer in using whatever works for fiction, but mostly, that's not life.

— Mona Simpson

“Good fiction is life with all the boring bits taken out, not with all the hardship taken out.”

— Caro Clarke

A novel is a printed circuit through which flows the force of a reader's own life.

— E. L. Doctorow

“Hurricanes couldn’t remove you from my mind. You’re my world and I’m incapable of not loving you.”

— Billie-Jo Williams

I'd never been to a science-fiction convention until I became a professional writer.

— China Mieville

“Just because someone is on your path, it doesn't mean that they're on your journey.”

— Lee M. Sapp

Writing fiction, like reading fiction, is a practice in empathy.

— Jennifer Haigh

In writing fiction, I can be free. I can use my life. The raw material is my experiences.

— Miriam Toews

“Kuandika hadithi ni kitu kimoja. Kuweka kanuni za fasihi katika hadithi ni kitu kingine.”

— Enock Maregesi

“Almost all heroism is designed to make you inert by placing it in a context that you can't possibly act on.”

— Stefan Molyneux

“If his relative success hadn't made him happy, it had, on average, made him less unhappy.”

— Adelle Waldman

“Why might not the world WHICH CONCERNS US—be a fiction?”

— Friedrich Nietzsche