Quotes About Fiction

Isaac Asimov's Foundation

Or in other words, science fiction is about what could be but isn't; fantasy is about what couldn't be.

Science fiction is not about the future. Like all other fiction, it is about the present. It simply uses different techniques to show us who we are, who we might be, and whom we ought to become.

It's all just fictions anyway. We do what we do and then we make up reasons for it afterward but they're never the true reasons, the truth is always just out of reach.

Speculative fiction includes all stories that take place in a setting contrary to known reality.

Memory is the diary that chronicles things that never happened or couldn't possibly have happened.

Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.

The fact is, that I told him a story with a moral." "Ah! that is always a very dangerous thing to do

And every place and time an author writes about is imaginary, from Oz to Raymond Chandler's L.A. to Dickens's London.

I think literature totally fails when it has an agenda. - From an interview on the podcast Starship Sofa, December 2010.

Are you making something up in your head, miss?" —FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT, A Little Princess Zener

What is wrong with story is that it is not a true story. Men have in their minds a picture of how the world will be. How they will be in that world. The world may be many different ways for them but there is one world that will never be and that is the world they dream of.

Die Geschichte ist eine Sammlung von Papier. Ein paar verblassende Erinnerungen. Nach einer Weile ist das, was nicht geschrieben steht, nie geschehen.

Dustfinger inspected his reddened fingers and felt the taut skin. 'He might tell me how my story ends,' he murmured. Meggie looked at him in astonishment. 'You mean you don't know?' Dustfinger smiled. Meggie still didn't particularly like his smile. It seemed to appear only to hide something else. 'What's so unusual about that, princess?' he asked quietly. 'Do you know how your story ends?' Meggie had no answer for that.

My dear Elinor, you were obviously born into the wrong story," said Dustfinger at last.

As Mo had said: writing stories is a kind of magic, too.

Unlike me, he realized that Dustfinger would do anything in return for such a promise. All he wants is to go back to his own world. He doesn't even stop to ask if his story there has a happy ending! Well, that's no different from real life, remarked Elinor gloomily. You never know if things will turn out well. Just now our own story looks like it's coming to a bad end.

The best lies stay close to the truth.

Aber diesesmal war ihre eigene Geschichte zu stark, um sich von der erfundenen vertreiben zu lassen.

Denkst du nicht auch, dass man von Zeit zu Zeit Geschichten lesen sollte, in denen alles etwas anders ist als in unserer Welt? Nichts lehrt einen besser zu fragen, warum die Bäume grün und nicht rot sind und warum man nur fünf und nicht sechs Finger hat.

Da dove devo cominciare? Intanto, va chiarita subito una cosa fondamentale: un romanziere non scrive mai tutto quello che sa sui suoi personaggi. I lettori non devono venire a sapere tutto. Alcuni aspetti è meglio che restino un segreto fra lo scrittore e le sue creature.

Come Mo aveva detto un giorno, scrivere storie, in fin dei conti, ha un po' a che fare con la magia.

We both know what fun it can be to get right into a book and live there for a while, but falling out of a story and suddenly finding yourself in this world doesn't seem to be much fun at all.

Jacob Reckless überlebt alles. Wer wei? das besser als du? Ich bin sicher, du kannst nicht an dem Fingern abzählen, wie often er eigentlich schon hätte tot sein müssen.