Quotes About Fiction

There's a classic appeal in the outsider as the central character of fiction, because that person is in the position to be the observer. People who are very active are not as observant. They don't see as much and they don't often think as much. They're too busy doing.

Our lives are fictions, a work we leave behind, signed.

Quantum fiction is any story that witnesses life and the human experience on a subatomic level.

The difference between real life and a story is that life has significance, while a story must have meaning. The former is not always apparent, while the latter always has to be, before the end.

Most civilizations had more fiction than they did real history.

An unhappy ending makes it literature rather than romantic fiction.

In fiction, beauty was run-of-the-mill.

Part of the beauty of fiction is that we come alive in a body that we don't own.

I felt Joyce was an influence on my fiction, but in a very general way, as a kind of inspiration and a model for the beauty of language.

Aurelie Sheehan's absorbing stories have depth miles beneath their compelling surface. They radiate a wisdom, beauty and originality rare in contemporary fiction.

'Breaking Bad.' Because it's the best American narrative fiction of the last ten years.

One of the best things you can relate to is a detailed story.

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

My faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened.

It is our business not to supply reality but to invent allusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented.

Adults are living increasingly as children: completely in their imaginations. Reading Harry Potter while every newspaper in the country goes out of business. They know so little that is real.

Fiction is just that-fiction. Yes, it is serious business, but it should also be taken for face value. It's entertainment. It's escapism. It's 365 pages of relaxation.

I mean, I'm in the business of storytelling, not message making.

My business is can I create a world that's possible and could happen? I think that's the only thing that I have to do, and I think that I have done that each time.

I sighed and put Slayer between the front seats. "Stay here. Guard the car." Saiman shut the door. "Is the sword sentient?" "No. But I like to pretend it is.

Surely if one doesn't find sex tiresome in life, it won't be tiresome in fiction,' said the Junior Dean. 'I do find it tiresome in life,' Dr Matthews replied. 'Or rather, I find other people's concern with it tiresome. One is told about it and told and told!

Reading fiction, I see through the prism of another person's understanding; reading everything else, I am travelling--I am travelling in the way that I still can: new sights, new experiences. I am reminded sometimes of the intensity of childhood reading, that absolute absorption when the very ability to read was a heady new gain, the gateway to a different place, to a parallel universe you hadn't known was there. The one entirely benign mind-altering drug.

Fiction can seem more enduring than reality. Pierre on the field of battle, the Bennet girls at their sewing, Tess on the threshing machine – all these are nailed down for ever, on the page and in a million heads. What happened to me on Charmouth beach in 1920, on the other hand, is thistledown.

Moments shower away; the days of our lives vanish utterly, more insubstantial than if they had been invented. Fiction can seem more enduring than reality.