Quotes About Fiction

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.

The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul and that I am sure is why he does it.

The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives.

For me, the pleasure of writing comes with inventing stories.

A good plot is like a dream.

If she's a lady, I'm a vernicious knid. (Eddie Albert in Willy Wanka and the Chocolate Factory)

11 A Surprise for Mrs. Fox

The picture showed a nine-year-old boy who was so enormously fat he looked as though he had been blown up with a powerful pump.

Who is more real? Homer or Ulysses? Shakespeare or Hamlet? Burroughs or Tarzan?

Value' has no meaning other than in relation to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human—'market value' is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average personal values, all of which must be quantitively different or trade would be impossible.

Science fiction means different things to different people. When I make a word do a lot of work like that, said Humpty Dumpty, I always pay it extra—in which case the term science fiction has piled up a lot of expensive overtime.

Value' has no meaning other than in relation to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human—'market value' is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average of personal values, all of which must be quantitatively different or trade would be impossible.

Robert A. Heinlein

I don't know who first said, Science fiction is the mythology of our time. An increasing number of occultists are realizing this and are incorporating science fiction into their rituals.

Can we begin to ask "how much truth does this book contain?" or "how much fiction does this book contain?" instead of the Aristotelian "Is it true or false?

Some books are lies frae end to end, And some great lies were never penn'd...

It's what we call a fanciful life construction. Also known as baloney.

Luka had been the Adam to her Eve, the Friday to her Robinson Crusoe, the Master to her Margarita. None of them were stories that left room for anyone else.

Leia Organa married Han Solo; and together they had three children.

Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.

Stories close the gap and reconcile between what we want life to be and how it actually is.

In these letters, I see the unique ability fiction has to connect people, and I see how universal some human experiences are: shame, guilt, regret, friendship, love, forgiveness, atonement.

If you want to write a novel about our world now, you'd better write science fiction, or you will be doing some kind of inadvertent nostalgia piece; you will lack depth, miss the point, and remain confused.

Kim Stanley Robinson