Quotes About Fiction

Imaginative writers often project their own monsters and meanings on basic facts.

Pick a genre Pick a word count Decide on the number of characters in your story Select a theme Give yourself a deadline for completing the story

There may always be another reality to make fiction of the truth we think we've arrived at.

The best crime fiction is not so much a search and rescue mission, but a recovery mission.

Make it interesting and it will be true: this is what story writers live by.

The characters and action in this story are purely fictitious. Should the description of certain journalistic practices result in a resemblance to the practices of Bild-Zeitung, such resemblance is neither intentional, nor fortuitous, but unavoidable.

Ciò di cui un clown ha bisogno è tregua, la finzione di ciò che gli altri chiamano tempo libero. Ma questi altri non capiscono che la finzione del tempo libero per un clown consiste appunto nel dimenticare il suo lavoro, e non lo capiscono proprio perché loro si occupano della cosiddetta arte proprio durante il loro tempo libero.

Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by fiction.

Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don't yet understand the characters well enough to write in their voices." [ Ten rules for writing fiction ( The Guardian , 20 February 2010)]

The good thing about books is that they remain themselves. What happens in their pages stays there. Harriet does not like the idea of the story bleeding through into real life. She trusts a story, and doesn't trust real life. But what makes her trust a story is the knowledge that it will stay where it is, that she can visit it but that there is no chance it will visit her.

For my Mr. Fox (whoever you are)

Mary. If you were real I'd run away with you forever.

Anything he liked, I'll like. Except if it's fiction. I never can get interested in things that didn't happen to people who never lived.

Realiteit is slechts de meest voor de hand liggende fictie.

The stories I create are never as awful as reality.

so much of James Bond was Ian Fleming himself. Ian was never able to write about anything he did not know, or any place he had not been. James Bond had been around for a long time -- as long, in fact, as Ian Fleming had been dreaming himself into fantasy situations. When he finally emerged on paper, 007 was a toughened-up younger-brother version of Ian himself: more straightforward, less interesting, the kind of young hothead Ian might have been had he not valued power above adventure.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

We should show life neither as it is or as it ought to be, but only as we see it in our dreams.

Hello, I'm Leonard Nimoy. The following tale of alien encounters is true. By true I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies and in the end, isn't that the truth? The answer is no.

The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer is: No.

I love the paranormal, because there, every genre I write can become one beacon for my imagination.

This," the Saint said to nobody in particular, "sounds like one of those stories that fellow Charteris might write.

But there are times, I would argue, when fiction delivers the greater truth.

Don't expect the puppets of your mind to become the people of your story. If they are not realities in your own mind, there is no mysterious alchemy in ink and paper that will turn wooden figures into flesh and blood.