Quotes About Fiction

To my mind, the prose in a non-fiction work that's going to endure has to be of the same quality as the prose in a work of fiction that endures.

Do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.

A work of fiction is conceived very much the same way as a dream occurs in the mind of a sleeper.

Concern for morality makes every work of the imagination false and stupid.

Writing is a consciousness formally at work in the territory of the imaginary.

Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won't keep reading your work.

There is an odd sense of responsibility attached to appearing in a drama about a real piece of history. A work of fiction is fun.

When I write, what I long for is not more realism or fiction but more courage. That's what I always find myself short on and what I have to struggle to achieve in order that the work might live.

I saw that my best work was my most personal work, which is odd, because my fiction is very far afield and has nothing to do with my life.

In a story, you can turn to the front and begin again and everyone lives once more. That doesn't work in real life. And I love my real people the most.

SERIAL, n. A literary work, usually a story that is not true, creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine.

I take care to only teach courses about fiction film. I believe that this balances and broadens my documentary work.

Well, I always talk about how I used to work at an insane asylum and stuff, which is true, but to be honest, I just make crap up more than anything else.

I, as the writer, can be very clear that I am writing a work of heightened fiction, as opposed to documenting horrible things that happen every day in the world. Which I have no interest in doing.

I've written some short stories about my personal experience, but it's not something you can use everywhere. Every novel, every work of fiction, needs its own food.

I would write light entertainment nonfiction pieces during the day, then come home and work on my fantasy fiction. It was very difficult to get out of the one mindset and into another one.

If a novel reveals true and vivid relationships, it is a moral work, no matter what the relationships consist in. If the novelisthonours the relationship in itself, it will be a great novel.

For fiction, Im not particularly nationalistic. Im not like the Hugo Chavez of Latin American letters, you know? I want people to read good work.

I don't like nihilistic characters. As bad guys they're great, but as heroes they don't work.

Top-shelf fiction, a Crown Royal ride into the heart of Night and New York. Con Lehane's work is reminiscent of the best of Lawrence Block, which is to say that this is very good stuff, indeed.

If you think of a work of fiction as a kind of scale model of the world, then the positive valences - where things turn out better than you thought they would - ought to be in there somewhere, too.

By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives realistically portrayed.

Wouldn't it be kinder to say that a lie is a short work of fiction? 'A story' as my daughter says?

I lay off a lot modern fiction and only rely on living writers for non-fiction work.