Quotes About Fiction

Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.

I always wanted to try the Turkish Delight in Narnia. When I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as a boy, I used to think that Turkish Delight must be incredibly delicious if it made Edmund betray his family," A.J. says. "I guess I must have told my wife this, because one year Nic gets a box for me for the holidays. And it turned out to be this powdery, gummy candy. I don't think I've ever been so disappointed in my entire life.

The Beauties" by Anton Chekhov, "The Doll's House" by Katherine Mansfield, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J. D. Salinger, "Brownies" or "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" both by ZZ Packer, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" by Amy Hempel, "Fat" by Raymond Carver, "Indian Camp" by Ernest Hemingway.

It had not been a lonely childhood, though many of her intimates had been somewhat less than real.

What do you read?" Ismay asks. "Little bit of everything. I started with crime novels. Pretty predictable that, I guess. But then A.J. got me into other kinds of books, too. Literary fiction, I think you'd call it. Some of it doesn't have enough action for my taste. Kind of embarrassing, but I like young adult. Plenty of action there and feelings, too.

But aren't we all actually fictions of each other?

Mes nesame kaip romanai. Ir ne kaip apsakymai. Gal? gale esame literat?ros k?rini? rinktin?.

What do you like?" she asks. "Everything else," he says. "I will also admit to an occasional weakness for short-story collections. Customers never want to buy them though.

So you're Dina," I say. "And you two are ..." "Jacob and Edward," the older one says, and they all start laughing. "Sorry, I meant ... I'm Luke, and he's Han," They stifle smiles this time. I'm pretty sure those are names from Star Wars. "Right, and I'm Chewbacca," I say.

Yours is much worse than Eastern! You've slapped together travel notes, moralistic ramblings, feelings, notes, jottings, untheoretical discussions, unfable-like fables, copied out some folk songs, added some legend-like nonsense of your own invention, and are calling it fiction!

It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.

That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

That's the news from Lake Woebegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

Often, I get the feeling that the story is really happening somewhere and all I'm doing is trying to work out the best way to tell it.

Okay, this is formally beyond fiction." Sherri began rocking on the bed. She laughed uncomfortably. "Is there a category beyond fiction? Science fiction? Fantasy? No, what you just described is beyond that. What's after fantasy?" "A cigarette and a restraining order," Curt said.

Sometimes, fiction tells a truth that history cannot.

I will eviscerate you in fiction. Every pimple, every character flaw. I was naked for a day; you will be naked for eternity.

Zombies, werewolves, vampires and ghosts are an escape from the real world because they don't exist in the real world.

Heather resented it that this woman was his daughter. How does a writer of the most subtle, serious fiction end up with a daughter who watches Oprah? I'd be a better daughter for him than she is.

You can make up your own story when you look at a photo.

en mi ficción intento poner límites al elemento disparate. Dragones, vampiros, duendes, espadas que cantan, etcétera, no tienen cabida en ella. Pese a todas mis aspiraciones a la locura, persiste en mí una vieja veta racionalista.

The resulting texts always took a narrative term, enigmatic at first but ultimately explicit and often premonitory. The semantic distribution of these basic elements diverted them from their original meaning, thus revealing their real significance. Henceforth, every form of writing will consist of an operation of decoding, of contamination, and of sense perversion. All this because all language is essentially mystification, and everything is fiction.

I opened the book to the title page, which said the book was "A Fictional Memoir." I had no idea what this meant, except that maybe it was one of the ways that Exley was crazy: maybe when he called his book a fictional memoir, it meant that he couldn't make up his mind, which is one of the things people really mean when they call someone crazy.

If a book is made up of things that are hard to believe, then we were like something out of a book.