Quotes About Fiction

My dear Lady Kroesig, I have only read one book in my life, and that is 'White Fang.' It's so frightfully good I've never bothered to read another.

When I read a novel I am not here. I am transported to far-off places, my eyes unseeing of the words on the page, busy with a scene being played out in my mind's eye, with my ears engaged, hearing the voices carry from the pen to the present. What a lovely place to be—not here.

When I read a novel I'm not here. I'm transported to far-off places, my eyes unseeing of the words on the page, busy with a scene being played out in my mind's eye, with my ears engaged, hearing the voices carry from the pen to the present. What a lovely place to be—not here.

This is the tragedy of the postmodern age. The things that matter most in life, that are necessary for a humane society—ideals like moral freedom, human dignity, even loving our own children—have been reduced to nothing but useful fictions. They are tossed into the attic, which becomes a convenient dumping ground for anything that a materialist paradigm cannot explain.

Montserrat Fontes's disturbing novel of a family trying to survive the brutal Porfirio Díaz regime at the turn of the twentieth century, Dreams of the Centaur, is followed by First Confession.

A. B. Guthrie's 1947 novel The Big Sky (even better than its sequel, The Way West, which won the Pulitzer Prize), The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark (1940), and Jack Schaefer's Shane (1949) were all made into well-regarded movies, but these three classics of Western fiction continue to make for wonderful reading.

Writing fiction has always, for me, been an alchemy of turning pain into poetry, ugliness into beauty. It has been a kind of redemption.

Writing is storytelling, and storytelling, after all, is play." Naomi Alderman

The dichotomy of man versus environment, or jobs versus environment, or prosperity versus environment, is a dangerous fiction constructed to justify greed. It cynically warrants destruction in the name of the false prophet of progress. That is what I believe.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

Novels are longer than life.

'Castle' is a guy living in a fantasy world. He's in his imagination, writing these stories of murder.

Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. —Herman Wouk

I don't write 'romance' stories, but character love stories, like the short story fiction published at Romantic4Ever.com and at WeddingNight.com, with romance of the heart and of adventure, in its many, many human varieties, as seen through the eyes and hearts and bodies of realist characters; whether about military special forces regiments, mail order brides in the outback, class-crossed samurai lovers, wealthy Victorian 'minorities,' or luscious vampires of another color.

I started out writing much more science fictiony stuff and writing about science fiction.

I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.

Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.

Somente no mundo real do céu, descobri um uso para o faz de conta. Um benefício da ficção: leva sua mente para fora da realidade, quando a sua realidade é perturbadora.

No matter how many books I write, I will eventually get to fiction. That is where I'm going.

It is not my purpose here to document the destruction caused by war [...] The point is to ask ourselves why these accounts have not had greater effect. [...] Why is it that many of us are deeply moved by visual art, fiction, and firsthand accounts of destruction and yet accept war as a means of resolving conflict or defending ourselves?

Creo que todo cuanto la imaginación humana ha representado es verdad

It's so unreal and beastly.' 'Murder is beastly. Unfortunately it's not unreal.

If you're going to ask me to provide myself with three nice little alibis," said Hersey, "you may as well know straight away that I can't do it. I seem to remember reading somewhere that that makes me innocent and I'm sure I hope it's true" "It's in the best tradition of detective fiction, I understand," said Allyen with a smile.