Quotes About Fiction

Elinor Loredan: But I just adore everything Persian. Meggie Folchart: You've been to Persia, then? Elinor: Yes, a hundred times. Along with St. Petersburg, Paris, Middle-Earth, distant planets and Shangri-la. And I never had to leave this room. Books are adventure. They contain murder and mayhem and passion. They love anyone who opens them.

Es gab Geschichten, dass der Natternkopf seinem Herold auch ein Herz aus Silber hatte anfertigen lassen, aber Fenoglio war sicher, dass in der Brust des Pfeifers ein menschliches Herz schlug. Nichts war grausamer, als ein Herz aus Fleisch und Blut, weil es wusste, was Schmerzen bereitete.

I wish I could do that, it whispered. I'd like to bring them out of books, touch them, all those characters, all those wonderful characters. I want them to come out of the pages and sit beside me, I want them to smile at me, I want, I want, I want...

I'd believe any story at all just so long as it's well told.

La sete di storie diminuiva se si poteva viverne una?

Cornelia Funke

Wake up, Dustfinger!" it said. "Come Back. The story isn't over yet.

They were here already, all of them: Dustfinger and Capricorn, Basra and Roxane, Minerva, Violante, the Adderhead...you merely wrote their story, but they didn't like it, and now they're writing it for themselves.

What happened to a book that disappeared into its own story?

Stories become great by hacking your brain. Nothing that happens in fiction matters. The people in fiction are fictional so their triumphs and tragedies have literally no consequence. The death of the yogurt you doomed to a fiery death in your gut acid this morning is finitely more tragic than the deaths of Romeo and Juliet. The yogurt was alive and then it died. Romeo and Juliet never lived in the first place.

I love zombies. If any monster could Riverdance, it would be zombies.

WARNING Any Relationship to any historical fact WHATSOEVER is entirely coincidental. You have been WARNED

Wasn't that what all stories said?You felt it, like a pang in your heart, when something was happening to someone you love

But I should note, for all my resistance to organized religion, that I don't believe Charlie could have quit drinking without it. It provided him with a way to structure his behavior, and a way to explain that behavior, both past and present, to himself. Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose--what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events? -- and perhaps it is my avid reading that has been my faith all along.

I'm not going to say the rule doesn't exist, but it's like Santa Claus. It's only real if you believe in it.

Curtis Sittenfeld

A dystopian story must not merely be dystopian; it must also be a story. Premise can only get you so far.

Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose—what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events?—and perhaps it is my avid reading that has been my faith all along.

She felt funny, strange, making up lies as quickly and smoothly as if she'd been doing it all her life.

Never trust the teller, trust the tale.

And what's romance? Usually, a nice little tale where you have everything as you like it, where rain never wets your jacket and gnats never bite your nose, and it's always daisy-time.

If there weren't so many lies in the world ... I wouldn't write at all.

Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy, one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English literature, to give up forever the writing of fiction. Criticism drove Thomas Chatterton, the English poet, to suicide.

A fiction writer weaves a fabric of lies in hopes of revealing deeper human truths.