Anthology Quote by Jeff VanderMeer

Fiction writing is just an excuse to go discover interesting things.

— Anthony Doerr

The practice of fiction can be dangerous: it puts ideas into the head of the world.

— Anthony Burgess

Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to…

— Flannery O'Connor

Fiction is like that, once it is released into the world: contagious, persistent. Like the contents of Pandora's box, a story that's freely given…

— Jodi Picoult

“As social concerns override literary ones, writers seem fated to eschew virtuosity and experimentation in favor of a bland but immediately accessible style. Writing…

— Nicholas Carr

“Good writers are like magpies, attracted to shiny things and storing away treasures - pieces of dialogue and experience - which pop up from…

— Jane Wilson-Howarth

When I see things in the world that leap out at me, I want to make use of them in fiction. Maybe every writer…

— Rachel Kushner

“To my mind, the most important thing in any form of fiction is the human element, but only if it takes us beyond the…

— Graham Worthington

Writers are magpies by nature, always collecting shiny things, storing them away and looking for connections of things.

— John Connolly

“The human condition is such that we can only stomach so much imagination. We need for things to be labeled either fiction or nonfiction.…

— J. W. Lord

Many fiction writers write for the critics or for themselves; they forget the common reader. I never do. I don't think journalism clashes with…

— Isabel Allende

“Think of literary fiction as a meal with intricate scents, flavors, and textures that you can’t recognize unless you chew with your eyes closed.”

— Jessica Bell