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Quotes About Fiction

Okay. How about detectives? What about Sherlock Holmes?" Stevie rolled her eyes. "What's wrong with Sherlock Holmes?" Janelle asked. "Nothing is wrong with Sherlock Holmes," Stevie said. "But he's not a costume. He's . .
~ Maureen Johnson
I still do not know what impels anyone sound of mind to leave dry land and spend a lifetime describing people who do not exist. If it is child's play, an extension of make believe - something one is frequently assured by people who write about writing - how to account for the overriding wish to do that, just that, only that, and consider it as rational an occupation as riding a bicycle over the Alps?
~ Mavis Gallant
No one is as real to me as people in the novel. It grows like a living thing. When I realize they do not exist except in my mind I have a feeling of sadness, looking around for them, as if the half-empty cafe were a place I had once come to with friends who had all moved away.
~ Mavis Gallant
Max Allan Collins
~ Good-bye, Beni.
She was particularly struck by a remark of Aristotle's, that tragedy was "more philosophic" than history, inasmuch as it concerned itself with what might be, while history was concerned with merely what had been.
~ Max Beerbohm
One day, all-prying Hermes told him of Clio's secret addiction to novel-reading. Thenceforth, year in, year out, it was in the form of fiction that Zeus wooed her. The sole result was that she grew sick of the sight of novels, and found a perverse pleasure in reading history.
~ Max Beerbohm
A healthy pallor," qualified the other, who was a constant reader of novels.
~ Max Beerbohm
Jeder Mensch erfindet sich früher oder später eine Geschichte, die er für sein Leben hält.
~ Max Frisch
Jeder Mensch erfindet sich früher oder später eine Geschichte, die er für sein Leben hält, [...] oder eine ganze Reihe von Geschichten [...].
~ Max Frisch
The trouble is, very few people, even in the least provincial communities, seem to understand that the motive for fiction, or the impulse from which it arises, is a serious one. They think of fiction as having no value except that of amusing and passing the time; and so it is impossible for them to understand why it could not just as well be pleasant and pretty.
~ Maxwell E. Perkins
There is always some sleight of hand going on in writing autobiography. So much has to be left out, especially things that might hurt or dismay people. But in a novel one can say everything. The novel is often autobiography distilled and / or transcended.
~ May Sarton
I don't know about lying for novelists. I look at some of the great novelists, and I think the reason they are great is that they're telling the truth. The fact is they're using made-up names, made-up people, made-up places, and made-up times, but they're telling the truth about the human being—what we are capable of, what makes us lose, laugh, weep, fall down, and gnash our teeth and wring our hands and kill each other and love each other.
~ Maya Angelou
I couldn't tell fact from fiction, Or if the dream was true My only sure prediction In this world was you. I'd touch your features inchly. Beard love and dared the cost, The sented spiel reeled me unreal And I found my senses lost.
~ Maya Angelou (Author)
She wanted happily ever after more than he could possibly know. She wanted forever. Problem was, she just wasn't sure she believed in it anymore. It was why she clung to her fiction so much. She immersed herself in books because there she could be anyone and it was easy to believe in love and happily ever after
~ Maya Banks
His words put an ache in her heart. She wanted happily ever after more than he could possibly know. She wanted forever. Problem was, she just wasn't sure she believed in it anymore. It was why she clung to her fiction so much. She immersed herself in books because there she could be anyone and it was easy to believe in love and happily ever after.
~ Maya Banks
Looking at someone else's relationship for the answers was like reading about a romance novel hero and expecting to find a carbon copy in real life
~ Maya Banks
Myth is the facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter.
~ Maya Deren
Bite me, Harry Potter.
~ Meg Cabot
Despite all evidence to the contrary, Grandmère believes that Ron Weasley, not Voldemort, is the villain of the Harry Potter series.
~ Meg Cabot
Life isn't a romance novel. The truth is, the reason romance novels sell so well ---- the reason why everyone loves them ---- is because no one's life is actually like that. Everyone WANTS their life to be like that.
~ Meg Cabot
Michael and I are an anomaly. Hardly anyone stays together forever with their first significant other, except maybe in YA novels. And usually when they do, it's because he's a vampire or a werewolf or owns a beautiful estate called Pemberley or something.
~ Meg Cabot
I love the Princess Diaries series! Do you?
~ Meg Cabot
Look, Mr. uh, Wulf I appreciate your trying to warn me about this, Ireally do. But there's no such thing as vampires. They're made-up. We writers made them up. I'm sorry we did such a good job that we made the whole world paranoid, but it's true. They're fictional. Blame Bram Stoker. He started it.
~ Meg Cabot
Life is not a romance novel
~ Meg Cabot