Quotes About Fiction

Throughout the proofs of the Ethics , therefore, the reader can never be certain whether the extraordinary ideas which are brought so compellingly before him are fiction or reality.

Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft armchair, you will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction. All is true.

Don't you see, said Father, that you are confusing fiction with facts, fiction does not create facts, fiction can come from facts, it can grow out of facts by compounding, transposing, augmenting, diminishing, or altering them in any way; but you must not confuse cause and effect, you must not confuse what really happened with what the story says happened, you must not lose your grasp on reality, that way madness lies.

It must always be considered as though spoken by a character in a novel

I myself cannot construct my love story to the end. I am its poet (its bard) only for the beginning; the end, like my own death, belongs to others; it is up to them to write the fiction, the external, mythic narrative.

I myself cannot (as an enamored subject) construct my love story to the end: I am its poet (its bard) only for the beginning; the end, like my own death, belongs to others; it is up to them to write the fiction, the external, mythic narrative.

I always write from my own experiences, whether I've had them or not.

I always write from experience, whether I've had them or not.

Science fiction invites the writer to grandly explore alternative worlds and pose questions about meaning and destiny. Inventing plausible new realities is what the genre is all about. One starts from a hypothesis and then builds out the logic, adding detail and incident to give substance to imaginary structures. In that respect, science fiction and theology have much in common.

thousand words of fiction a month. He was writing

There are only two real people in fiction – the storyteller and the listener

fiction started up, and we started burning brain cells on stories about things that didn't happen to people who didn't exist. Why? The only answer can be that humans deeply, deeply desired it.

He liked fiction better than fact, because fact often wasn't. Like most people he knew a couple of things for sure, up close and eyeballed, and when he saw them in books they were wrong. So he liked made-up stories better, because everyone knew where they were from the get-go. He wasn't strict about genre. Either shit happened, or it didn't.

Reacher thanked the guy for the ride, and got out, and watched the truck squeal away, each tire insisting the other three were wrong.

desperate. How could fiction help? Which it had to

Never underestimate the power of fiction to tell the truth.

What is his sorrow?' She asked the Gryphon. And the Gryphon answered, very nearly in the same words as before, 'It's all his fancy, that: he hasn't got no sorrow, you know'.

You know very well you're not real.

CHAPTER 1. Down the Rabbit-Hole CHAPTER 2. The Pool of Tears CHAPTER 3. A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale CHAPTER 4. The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill CHAPTER 5. Advice from a Caterpillar CHAPTER 6. Pig and Pepper CHAPTER 7. A Mad Tea-Party CHAPTER 8. The Queen's Croquet-Ground CHAPTER 9. The Mock Turtle's Story CHAPTER 10. The Lobster-Quadrille CHAPTER 11. Who Stole the Tarts? CHAPTER 12. Alice's Evidence ABOUT THE AUTHOR

If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't.

Si así fue, así pudo ser; si así fuera, así podría ser; pero como no es, no es.

pues a esta curiosa criatura le gustaba mucho pretender que era dos personas a la vez.

It's all her fancy: she never executes nobody, you know.

In books, the truth makes everything good and fine. The good prevail. The wicked are punished. There is happiness. But it's not like that really, is it? No, I say. I suppose it only makes everything known.