Quotes About Fiction

have learned a great deal from novels. Some of it is even true.

books were a way to lead another life, a way to be someone else entirely, to be anyone at all.

Sometimes it takes a lot of distance to be able to fold a piece of your life into a work of fiction.

When we worry," Drew continued, "we take reality and move it into the realm of fiction. What is real is transferred into the land of monsters and dragons, which seem far bigger and more frightening than they really are.

I do love a good yarn, fiction and fiber. The only thing that equals my joy in knitting is the pleasure of reading!" —Priscilla

If, if, if. If a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass every time he jumped.

In life one rarely knows which remarks of the hundreds uttered in the course of a day will turn out to be auspicious. In fiction, foreshadowing is planted and flagged in some (hopefully or desperately) subtle way, drama demands it.

The Past just left. Its remnants, I claim, are mostly fiction. We're stranded here with the threadbare patchwork of memory, you with yours, I with mine.

he'd revised his thinking as to reincarnation and now believed the concept to be solely metaphorical, "just another word game, even if the saints and Buddhas are playing it," and who was I to argue about things like reincarnation? My own treatment of the matter went no farther than to pray it was a fiction, this single current addled existence of mine being vastly more than enough.

A man is the stories he tells about himself, and most of those stories are lies.

Character, I think, is the single most important thing in fiction. You might read a book once for its interesting plot—but not twice.

Black Jack. A common name for rogues and scoundrels in the eighteenth century. A staple of romantic fiction, the name conjured up charming highwaymen, dashing blades in plumed hats. The reality waled at my side.

It was not Monsieur Arouet, but a colleague of his—a lady novelist—who remarked to me once that writing novels was a cannibal's art, in which one often mixed small portions of one's friends and one's enemies together, seasoned them with imagination, and allowed the whole to stew together into a savory concoction.

Turd-eating son of a flying tortoise

Conflict and character are the heart of good fiction, and good mystery has both of those in spades.

Diana Gabaldon

Diana Gabaldon

I don't," he said bluntly. "But I saw that fiction"—he pronounced the word gingerly, as though it were something dangerous—"is perhaps not, as I had thought, merely an inducement to idleness and wicked fancy.

What I hate in fiction is when the author knows better than the characters what they should do.

Without fail, the first question I am asked at any author event is, 'Are your books based on your real life?'

Authorities in Rabat believe that if we create a Moroccan character, even in a work of fiction, we are responsible for the image of Moroccan women.

Most authors would love to see their characters made for the screen, especially one that's quite colourful.

Everything is autobiographical, and nothing is autobiographical. That's fiction.

Though my stories aren't autobiographical, I do sometimes use things from my life.