Belief Quote by William James

“An author’s strong belief and enthusiasm will affect the writing of the book and often the publisher’s commitment to it.”

— Sterling Lord

And that which yesterday was the novel opinion of one man, to-day becomes the general opinion of the majority.

— Leo Tolstoy

“Novels should reflect reality to some extent, otherwise they risk being sentimental.”

— Marc Levy

“...no mind ever grew fat on a diet of novels. The pleasure which they occasionally offer is far too heavily paid for: they undermine…

— Elias Canetti

A novel which persuades us of its truth is true however full of lies it may be

— Mario Vargas Llosa

The writer, like everyone else, is equipped in infancy with a thick padding of things he believes to be true, but which aren't.

— Jon Franklin

“Some readers were aware that the novels they loved amounted to a propaganda campaign, that the love stories had a particular agenda that might…

— Hanne Blank

“...in autobiography, as in all literature, what actually happened is less important than what the author can manage to persuade his audience to believe”

— Salman Rushdie

“It is rather alarming how quickly people will turn someone else’s fiction into fact in order to support their own fictions of themselves.”

— Libba Bray

In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with…

— Thomas Paine

“Everyone had a story he believed was worthy of a best-seller; for me, reality was rarely interesting enough to take the place of fiction.”

— Ben Mezrich

“A second, parallel explanation of why our mistakes are so persistent took shape in the late 1990s: Our brains are designed to reproduce rather…

— Rolf Dobelli