Art Quote by Fernando Pessoa

“The only real people are the people who never existed, and if a novelist is base enough to go to life for his personages…

— Oscar Wilde

“The only real people are the people who never existed, and if a novelist is base enough to go to life for his personages…

— Oscar Wilde

The materials of the novelist must be real; they must be gathered from the field of humanity by his actual observation.

— Goldwin Smith

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

— Katie Kitamura

“Literature is the real life of imaginary people.”

— Stefanos Livos

“The beauty of fiction is it need not be factual and the writer's imagination can travel as far from reality as he or she…

— Sheldon Friedman

“A novel is a made-up work about made-up people in a made-up place, all of which is very real.”

— Thomas C. Foster

“If a writer doesn't believe his fictional characters are actually real, how can he expect the readers to?”

— Jim Power

“All fiction is based on some form of reality—otherwise we would never have the inspiration or knowledge to dream up the realistic situations we…

— Rene Folsom

“Writers need their writing; they need their imaginary worlds in order to find piece in, or make sense of, the real world.”

— Terry Brooks

The usual criticism of a novel about an artist is that, no matter how real he is as a man, he is not real…

— Randall Jarrell

“Fiction can be more real to the reader than reality itself because fiction is the essence of life”

— James N. Frey