Civilizations Quote by Vernor Vinge

When I was growing up, the exam system didn't allow you to write fiction, so you never did.

— Roddy Doyle

I ran away to sea. I know that only happens in fiction. But it's what I did.

— Sterling Hayden

Contrary to common belief, Christian fiction did not begin with Catherine Marshall, Janette Oke, or Frank Peretti.

— Randy Alcorn

[Jack] Kerouac was writing fiction. What he did when he wrote about me...he made me out with Russian Countesses and Swiss accounts and other…

— William S. Burroughs

I haven't written a word of fiction since 2009. I have no desire to write fiction. I did what I did and it's done.…

— Philip Roth

“My mother neither encouraged the reading of science fiction nor did she disparage it. She told me later that there was a scheme of…

— Don Borchert

I think if someone could demonstrate to me that fiction did no good, I would still do it, because I think it does good…

— George Saunders

The law reports in newspapers contain perhaps the only real history of England that has any relation to truth.

— Robert Baldwin Ross

The real history, the one that counts and is not to be found in books, is precisely this one, the one made by simple…

— Eugenio Montale

Real history is far more complex and interesting than the simplistic summaries presented in Wikipedia articles. Knowing this allows you to question received wisdom,…

— Ken Liu

“Psychology has a long past, yet its real history is short.”

— Hermann Ebbinghaus

How real is history? Is it just an enormous soup so full of disparate ingredients that it is uncharacterizable?

— Thomas Cahill