Quotes About Fiction

How readily and thinly we procure these fictional selves, deceiving the world and what we might have become if only we hadn't got in the way, if only we had waited to see what might have become of us.

I like for things to happen, for stories to unfold. And if I can't find a good enough story, I make one.

Stories can justify anything. It doesn't matter if the boy with the heart of stone is a hero or a villain; it doesn't matter if he got what he deserved or if he didn't. No one can reward him or punish him, save the storyteller.

Because stories tell a truth, if not precisely the truth.

I want to tell you so many lies," he says.

Reading about Bordertown was the first time I saw people like me in speculative fiction. Messed-up kids, making messsed-up choices. I couldn't be a magician's apprentice or a pig keeper who might or might not be a king's son or a princess with a prophecy hanging over my head. But I could, maybe, somehow, be part of a community of artists who loved magic.

Stories can justify anything. It doesn't matter if the boy with the heart of stone is a hero or a villain; it doesn't matter if he got what he deserved or if he didn't. No one can reward him or punish him, save the storyteller. And she's the one who shaded the tale so we'd feel whatever way we feel about him in the first place.

The book turned out to be one she'd read before, where zombies chased around a brother-and-sister reporting team.

Stories tell a truth, if not precisely the truth.

Even if you are completely delusional, we still have to work out your delusion, right? An imaginary problem needs an imaginary solution.

Las cosas buenas no ocurren en los libros de cuentos. O cuando lo hacen, algo malo siempre pasa después, porque de lo contrario, la historia seria aburrida, y nadie lo leería

I want to tell you so many lies/

If I can't find a good enough story I make one.

Widzisz, ?adna cz??? tej ba?ni nie by?a k?amstwem, cho? historia by?a zupe?nie nieprawdziwa.

If I can't find a good enough story, I make one.

He was just a reader and readers can't do anything to make a story stop - except close the book.

You always liked stories,' I remind him. 'You said you wanted to create sparks of stories. Well, the tale of a twin who murders her sister's betrothed is a good one, don't you think?

The easiest lies to tell are the ones you want to be true.

Fiction---good fiction, anyway---is dream made flesh, given purpose and drive, and set on a quest to show us the best in us and to give us the power and the tools to dream beyond reality's 'merely good enough' to a vision of what is truly great... ...and then to give us the stories of men and women of character who in turn inspire those of us who dare to reach for the truly great within ourselves. THAT is why you write fiction.

I didn't lie! I just created fiction with my mouth!

This short novel is the opening work of the Scènes de la vie privée, the first volume of La Comédie humaine. The novella was originally entitled Gloire et Malheur (Glory and Misfortune) when it was written in 1829. Published by Mame-Delaunay in the following year, it was followed by four revised editions. The final edition was published by Furne in 1842, appearing under the title of La Maison du chat-qui-pelote.

I miss the days when I was alone with my characters and no one else knew them except me.

Reader, she didn't marry him,

her grandfather used to say, "Never spoil a good story with the facts.