Attention Quote by Alice McDermott

Every good book should be entertaining. A good book will be more; it must not be less. Entertainment…is like a qualifying examination. If a…

— Anonymous

“we read fiction to satisfy a more basic need—to imagine our way into other lives, to explore characters and situations that tell us something…

— Tom Perrotta

In writing literary fiction, you are trying to help yourself. And readers are going to literary fiction not just to be entertained, but because…

— Mohsin Hamid

Fiction allows you to embody certain ideas and give them an emotional reality. The characters allow you to get close viscerally to an idea.

— Anne Michaels

Fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification,

— Marilynne Robinson

I just want fiction to remain a vital force for entertainment and not just for contemplation. Both things can exist.

— Gary Shteyngart

Fiction is a place where people can meet, where they take the time to very seriously examine and think about the experiences of other…

— Phil Klay

The purpose of a work of fiction is to appeal to the lingering after-effects in the reader's mind as differing from, say, the purpose…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

The beauty of prose fiction that I see is simply that in order to create something you need only pay attention to personal exigency.

— James Kelman

Fiction supplies the only philosophy that may readers know; it establishes their ethical, social, and material standards; it confirms them in their prejudices or…

— Dorothea Brande

Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic…

— Ann Patchett

Good fiction must be entertaining- but what makes fiction special- and True- is that the realness of a novel allows it to carry a…

— Jerry B. Jenkins