Quotes About Fiction

Tina is so mad at Charlotte Brontë. She says Jane Eyre ruined her life.

That was the thing about Will Price, though: those good looks of his were deceptive. They'd managed to fool many, many people into thinking he was a sweet guy—a guy like the heroes he wrote about in his books, who lived only to adore and worship women . . . until he killed them off in some tragic freak accident, leaving the heroine brokenhearted but "stronger for having known what real love was." Barf.

The great thing about fiction is that you can start off by telling the truth, then start making stuff up like crazy whenever you feel like it.

And Kingsley being Kingsley, he smiled as he pretended to pull the trigger.

Looking for Narnia? You're in the wrong universe

Of course," Carl's father would say, "this is just a story and stories are always a little bit true and a little bit false; we just don't know which is which.

Of course," Cal's father would say, "this is just a story and stories are always a little bit true and a little bit false; we just don't know which is which.

everything written is at least in part fantasy. Except maybe the national budget. That's horror.

They didn't have to be true to be good.

And when it comes down to cases, everything written is at least in part a fantasy. Except maybe for the national budget. That's horror.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit Table of Contents

your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.

Science fiction stories are those in which some aspect of future science or high technology is so integral to the story that, if you take away the science or technology, the story collapses.

The term sci-fi, which most science fiction writers loathe, I will reserve for those motion pictures that claim to be science fiction but are actually based on comic strips. Or worse.

that part of what I loved about poetry was how the distinction between fiction and nonfiction didn't obtain, how the correspondence between text and world was less important than the intensities of the poem itself, what possibilities of feeling were opened up in the present tense of reading.

BERNARD CORNWELL is the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Agincourt; the bestselling Saxon Tales, which include The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, Lords of the North, and Sword Song; and the Richard Sharpe novels, among many others. He lives with his wife on Cape Cod. WWW.BERNARDCORNWELL.NET

My wife is the most savage critic. She doesn't feel intimidated by my reputation. As far as she's concerned, she's just criticising a boyfriend who'd recently had a go at fiction. She can tell me to abandon whole novels.

Creating fake facts does require a measure of haphazard research, insofar as they need to not just be possible, but also interesting.

The way I usually put it is that as an SF writer, I'm never required to be right.

Enjoying fiction requires a shift in selfhood. You give up your own identity and try on the identities of other people, adopting their perspectives so as to share their experiences. This allows us to enjoy fictional events that would shock and sadden us in real life.

People ask me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research.

When I'm not writing, I do a lot of research reading on the shape of civilization. Fiction can be a lot of different things... but I feel like it's my job to write about the way things are.

I could write historical fiction, or science fiction, or a mystery but since I find it fascinating to research the clues of some little know period and develop a story based on that, I will probably continue to do it.

I've tried very hard and I've never found any resemblance between the people I know and the people in my novels.