Quotes About Fiction

As one of the admirers of Carlos Castaneda puts it: If the account is a documentary truth, then Castaneda is a great anthropologist; if it is an imaginative tale, then he is a master fiction writer. In either case he wins. How can we reply to this argument?

I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.

Journalism and popular fiction have merged, and the graphic and the plausible have become an end in themselves. The contemporary public plainly prefers mirrors to windows.

True history, said Hearst, with a smile that was, for once, almost charming, is the final fiction. I thought even you knew that.

Perhaps we are all fictions, father, in the mind of God.

What did the truth matter? All characters once dead, if they continue to exist in memory at all, tend to become fictions.

I laugh at anyone who spends so much time writing about what doesn't exist - mental concepts.

All characters once dead, if they continue to exist in memory at all, tend to become fictions.

A complete fiction! Yet something that was clearly and completely fiction could also contain—this was the nub and the mystery of the matter—truth.

If this book has made any point clear, I hope it's that things don't have to be real to be true. Or vice versa.

Animal Man: 'Listen, just tell me one thing: am I REAL or what?' Grant Morrison: 'Of COURSE you're real! We wouldn't be here talking if you weren't real. 'You existed long before I wrote about you and, if you're lucky, you'll still be young when I'm old or dead. 'You're more real than I am.

We live in the stories we tell ourselves.

We became friends over detective fiction. She's a true friend.

We're more interested in the editor of this Astounding Science Fiction. General Groves sent me to ask that someone who knows more about this work you're doing interview this"—he glanced at a card—"John W. Campbell.

Karl wondered how many scientists read this science fiction stuff. Maybe they couldn't get good books out in New Mexico?

One must take care that one's life does not begin to resemble the plot of a novel.

One must take care that one's life does not begin to resemble the plot of a novel.

And because I was in love with her, I felt trapped by those fictions.

But to me, 'Worlds' is meant as kind of an appreciation of fiction and stories and escapism and fantasy.

The genre of horror is really just a way to manage much larger, much more terrifying realities in our daily worlds.

We all like going to the dark side of things; we all like dipping into worlds that we don't know anything about, or hopefully don't know anything about. I think 'Banshee' gives people a chance to do that pretty safely because we all know there's a solid buffer between the show and reality.

When I write fiction, I have the illusion of being able to control these fictional worlds and these characters, and to make them say what I want them to say. Of course, the problem is that it is an illusion, and by the end of it you realize that you're not in control of it at all; the characters have taken over, and they're driving the vehicle.

It's a failure of imagination if you can only write what you know - we have to be able to imagine different worlds.

Science fiction is about worlds you don't know and worlds you can create, like in 'Avatar'.