Quotes About Fiction

A train thunders by late at night, you gaze idly at the dark rushing mass, you see a patch of light and within that patch of light, a face; in a wink of time it is gone - but, having seen it, you know it will never be gone, you know you will see that face in your dreams perhaps forever. Such is the insubstantial stuff of which fiction - or madness - is made.

life is a bad reason for including a character in a story.

These books were a way of escaping from the unhappiness of my life.

It is the fate of all authors or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and lose them in the course of art.

There is sometimes an odd disposition in this country to dispute as improbable in fiction, what are the commonest experiences in fact.

We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.

We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did.

If I might offer any apology for so exaggerated a fiction as the Barnacles and the Circumlocution Office,

When my thoughts go back, now, to that slow agony of my youth, I wonder how much of the histories I invented for such people hangs like a mist of fancy over well-remembered facts!

It is remarkable that what we call the world, which is so very credulous in what professes to be true, is most incredulous in what professes to be imaginary; and that, while, every day in real life, it will allow in one man no blemishes, and in another no virtues, it will seldom admit a very strongly-marked character, either good or bad, in a fictitious narrative, to be within the limits of probability.

Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in 'Black Mask' magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world.

Painters and poets have liberty to lie.

Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

The wrong word is like a lie jammed inside the story.

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.

I know, but it is a pleasant fiction, my dear, and the sheer impossibility of a quest is no reason to abandon it.

It is one of the joys of studying history that first impressions are always wrong. Truth is proverbially stranger than fiction, but only because no guiding mind has contrived to make it credible.

This was the great truth of life, that fact and fiction were always merging, interchanging.

Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real.

The truth is stranger than fiction . . . and often more incriminating.

I've never believed in wormholes," Fatima confessed. "Take two in relative motion and you've got a time machine. And I definitely don't believe in time machines." -"Maybe you can believe in just one wormhole at a time," Gabrielle replied, deadpan.

Bad fiction uses the glossy generality; good writing needs the smattering of detail, the unrelenting busy mystery of the real.

There is nothing finer in the world than the telling of tales. Split atoms if you wish, but splitting an infinitiveand getting away with itis far nobler. Lance boils if you wish, but pricking pretensions is often cleaner and always more fun.

One man's daydreaming is another man's novel.