Quotes About Fiction

What fiction and art can do, particularly narrative art, is construct consciousness - in a sense, we have to do it for the first time, every time.

My only obligation as a fiction writer is to the story, to make it good, so good the busy reader doesn't feel that flipping those pages was a waste of time. And I still believe that.

I don't have too much time for fiction.

I didn't 'decide' to write YA, per se. But every time I thought of a story, it featured characters 15, 16, 17.

You don't call Acheron 'babe.' (Valerius) You don't call Acheron 'babe' because...well, that's just sick. But I call him 'babe' all the time. (Tabitha)

You should spend more time with your families; write that novel you've always wanted to write. You know, the one about the fearless reporter who stands up to the administration. You know - fiction.

Time slowed and reality bent; on and on the eggman went.

Critics have been amusing themselves for a long time by auscultating fiction for signs of heart failure.

I was a very keen reader of science fiction, and during the time I was going to libraries, it was good, written by people who knew their science.

It's a guilty secret of a lot of writers, as you get older you don't read as much fiction as you used to, mainly because it's like you are deconstructing it all the time.

The prologues are over. It is a question, now, Of final belief. So, say that final belief Must be in a fiction. It is time to choose.

But that's one advantage of fiction, you can speed up time.

Honest to God, Bill, the way things are going, all I can think of is that I'm a character in a book by somebody who wants to write about somebody who suffers all the time.

Y'know, we're all wasting our time writing this hack science fiction! You wanta make real money, you gotta start a religion!

There's a special gut-check moment the first time you write a scene in which somebody casts a spell.

Jane's stories are extremely sensible. Then Diana puts too many murders into hers. She says most of the time she doesn't know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them.

I have two sisters, and I think siblings are always going to be irresistible for novelists. They have been throughout time and they'll continue to be.

I don't think I ever believed in love, not really. Just though it was something James Bond made up, a long time ago, to get laid.

A reader can never tell if it's a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you're reading it, they're the same. It's a thimble. It's in the book.

Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.

Muse, time has taught me that all metaphysical systems, even historical facts given as truths, are hardly that, so I amuse myself with more agreeable lies; I no longer read anything but novels.

They [my characters]speak to me all the time! In fact some of them never shut up!

The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.

The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell together, as quickly as possible.