Quotes About Fiction

A romance novel is more than just a story in which two people fall in love. It's a very specific form of genre fiction. Not every story with a horse and a ranch in it is a Western; not every story with a murder in it is a mystery; and not every book that includes a love story can be classified as a romance novel.

In a lot of Western science fiction, you need some form of conflict, whether it's aliens or robots. I think in Western culture, being more suspicious of science, and hubris, you'll see a lot of fear of creating something that goes out of control.

Implanting a microchip inside the brain to augment its mental powers has long been a science fiction trope.

The highest praise is when a kid says, 'This book feels so real; this could have happened at my school.'

My job isn't to preach to people, it's to entertain them. I like letting the characters speak for themselves.

I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer.

'AVP' is not trying to be 'Alien' or 'Aliens,' and it's not trying to be 'Predator.' Those are genius movies.

I enjoy it when characters love each other. It's more interesting, actually - it's less predictable.

I think there's always been, to some degree, a misunderstanding about what science fiction is all about, in that it has been judged by the general public as being literature of prediction, and it isn't.

I much prefer a plotted novel to a novel that is really conceptual.

But I don't read a lot of fiction. I prefer the nonfiction stuff.

As a kid, I didn't drift into the comic world too much because I preferred to read fantasies novels and science fiction.

I've written fiction for as long as I can remember; it's always been my preferred form of play.

I have been pregnant in so many movies it's ridiculous.

Some people say, 'Well you're a man; how do you write about women or girls when you don't know about them?' Well, I've got my imagination, and I can write about women. Yes, I'll never be pregnant and give birth to children, but I can imagine a bit of what it's like. When you create characters, it's just about making them really real to people.

I was an outsider, never quite part of what was going on, always looking in. It turned out to be great preparation for writing fiction.

I think what a lot of fiction is, is the imagining of the worst so as to prepare ourselves.

I suppose writing nonfiction did prepare me for writing fiction. Whenever you write anything, you're honing your skills for writing anything else.

It's a good thing about George R.R. Martin: He's prepared to kill off the main guys. You don't get the feeling that the good guy is going to last forever, like James Bond.

It's the prerogative of the writer to rewrite the world into one he would like to exist.

I think anything goes in fiction as long as it fits within the interior logic of the work itself and is presented in a disciplined manner.

It is a fiction to imagine that the haphazard paper chits of old are more private than the modern digital alternative. Paper records have always presented a security risk.

Anchors aren't just creating fiction; they're becoming characters in the fiction they themselves create. In the world of TV channels, facts are presented like fiction, so governments aren't inconvenienced; fiction is presented like fact, so governments stay happy.

As a literature of change driven by technology, science fiction presents religion to a part of the reading public that probably seldom goes to church.