Books Quote by Oscar Wilde

Much historical fiction that centers on real people has always been deficient in information, lacking in craft and empty in affect.

— Hilary Mantel

The interesting thing about fiction from a writer's standpoint is that the characters come to life within you. And yet who are they and…

— Whitley Strieber

I wonder if it's in the nature of fiction writers to never quite see their own lives as 'real,' since we are always making…

— Julia Glass

Writers of novels live in a strange world where what's made up is as important as what's real.

— Sara Sheridan

All a writer's characters are imaginary, no matter whether they are based on real people or not. They are people as one imagines them…

— Allan Massie

Every reader knows about the feeling that characters in books seem more real than real people.

— Cornelia Funke

Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary…

— Raymond Queneau

Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing.

— Joseph Conrad

History is filled with fictional people.

— Anonymous

There's something to be said for a likable character, but fiction has a way of upending our ordinary standards.

— Ben Dolnick

Fiction always reveals a lot about the person who is writing it. That's the scary thing. Not in a straightforward autobiographical sense. But the…

— Katie Kitamura

Most good fiction also has a character the writer seems to know more deeply than anyone can actually be known in life, but a…

— Nell Freudenberger