Quotes About Fiction

Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.

Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works. […] A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skillfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first.

No, says Ariana. It was a dream. Reality got in the way, that's all.

It was not exactly circular logic. More like spiral. An accepted lie that spun in upon itself until truth and fiction disappeared into a singularity of who the hell cares, as long as I'm happy?

Fiction is all too often one rationalisation away from reality. (from the acknowledgements of Unwind)

It was not exactly circular logic. More like spiral. An accepted lie that spun in upon itself until truth and fiction disappeared into a singularity of who the hell cares, as long as I'm happy?

Except, of course, when he made shit up.

Fiction is an improvement on life

It made me feel good to write about the Baron. A man needed somebody. There wasn't anybody around, so you had to make up somebody, make him up to be like a man should be. It wasn't make- believe or cheating. The other way was make-believe and cheating: living your life without a man like him around.

I write fiction. What's fiction ?? Fiction is an improvement on life.

F)iction is...what ought to have been, not what actually was. At least, not exactly.

Reasons for cancellation order: 1. Baby-eating aquatic faerie equines do not exist.

Horror fiction allows us to confront and sublimate our fears of an uncontrollable universe, but the threat verges on the overwhelming and may indeed carry the protagonists away. Spy fiction in contrast allows us to believe for a while that the little people can, by obtaining secret knowledge, acquire some leverage over the overwhelming threats that permeate their universe.

As man sows, so shall he reap. In works of fiction, such men are sometimes converted. More often, in real life, they do not change their natures until they are converted into dust.

Where is the B. who didn't at all like speculative fiction writers, with the exception of Margaret Atwood and the Jewish triumvirs: Asimov, Ellison, and Tidhar?" "Really?" I say. "Tidhar? Jesus Christ." "Yes," she screams. "Tidhar! You loved Tidhar!

It began to dawn on me that although fiction was undoubtedly fictitious it could also be true or false, not with the truth or falsehood of a news item but as to its disinterestedness, its intention, its integrity.

There's an old folk saying that goes: whenever you delete a sentence from your NaNoWriMo novel, a NaNoWriMo angel loses its wings and plummets, screaming, to the ground. Where it will likely require medical attention.

fiction writing can be a blast when you set aside debilitating notions of perfection and just dive headlong into the creative process.

A wearable, writing-enhancing object serves several important purposes. First, it helps you transition from the world of everyday living into the fictional realms you've created. In the former you are a normal person, working a normal job. In the latter, you are an all-powerful deity capable of laying waste to entire cities with a few taps of the keyboard.

I was just about to begin writing 'Mirror Mirror', within about a week of it, when September 11, 2001 happened. I found myself incapable of caring about fiction-making for a number of months.

I think my characters are more wish fulfillments than they are mirrors. They see things I don't and live in a world I can only enter through words.

It's really a misconception to identify the writer with the main character, given that the author creates all the characters in the book. In certain ways, I'm every character.

Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

I love writing fiction and can do it anywhere - I once even missed a flight because I was so engrossed.