Commercial Fiction Quotes

Was she happy? She thought – yes, reasonably so. Then again, what was happiness but the vast terrain between ecstasy and agony? Was this too small an ambition? ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

And although he recognized that tenderness was not the same as passion, and certainly not equivalent to love, for now it seemed to him a suitable substitute. ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

If it's commercial fiction that you want to write, it's story, story, story. You've got to get a story where if you tell it to somebody in a paragraph, they'll go, "Tell me more." And then when you start to write it, they continue to want to read more. And if you don't, it won't work. ~ James Patterson

On occasion he would think back to the fiercest passion it had been his pleasure to experience and reflect on what might have been. He would look upon the woman who occupied the opposite half of his bed and feel his life had not quite lived up to the promise of another day. These moments would be mercifully brief, or so he hoped. ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

His fierce appreciation of female beauty, the unrelenting desire he felt for their company, the pleasure he both derived and sought to give, had led him in and out of quite a few bedroom doors. ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Was happiness (which was perhaps achieved not by getting what you wanted, but rather, by obtaining what you didn't know you wished for until it was in hand) a hologram that would continually change appearance with the slightest shift of perspective? Or maybe happiness by definition was a temporary state of being recognizable only in hindsight. It was impossible to catch what always managed to be overrun and end up in the rear view mirror. ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Nothing felt better to him than the act of waiting for her. As long as he believed it wasn't in vain, he was able to justify his presence. ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

I write literary, not commercial, fiction - or so I've been told by my publishers who are proud I write literary fiction but secretly wish I wrote commercial. ~ Tawni O'Dell

Perhaps all love stories no matter how varied are essentially the same. ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Commercial fiction writing – where my bread is buttered – is fairly straightforward. The writing is simply efficiency and story. The more you have of one the less you need of the other. ~ Joe Ducie

Sometimes I still feel that there are two of me: one clean, flawless picture, the other imperfect and cracked; one boy, one girl; one voice that speaks aloud and one that whispers in my ear; one publicly known to have been troubled but be on the mend, the other who has privately lost something to do with innocence and gained something to do with knowledge and adulthood that can never be undone. I feel sometimes there are things that tear me in two directions, that there are two sets of thoughts that grow side by side. But then I realize that I am whole, whatever that means and does not mean; I am complete without the need for additions or alteration. ~ Abigail Tarttelin

I love smart commercial fiction. Susan Isaacs, for example and the readers who interest me are, in the preponderance, women. I am one of them; I like the books they like. ~ Beth Gutcheon

Just like a butterfly, I had sprung from my cocoon for the first time. For my risk, I was rewarded with Jacob Bennett." - Laylla Jonson (Beneath the Blossom Tree) ~ L.B. Malpass

Once you break someone's heart, you are forever its master. ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

I'm writing exactly the kinds of books I like to write. And they're the kinds of books I like to read. They're popular commercial fiction. That's what they are. ~ Joy Fielding

Life was a swirl of mysteries, each one waiting to be plucked up and explored, but not necessarily solved. As the weight of responsibility bore down on a person, it could feel like a long list of chores leading up to the final one - figuring out how to die with dignity. But Quincy's interpretation of his surroundings seemed a truer representation of life's meaning, or rather, the lack of meaning other than to dazzle and delight and befuddle from cradle to grave. ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

I'm not writing great literature. I'm writing commercial fiction for people to enjoy the stories and to like the characters. ~ Kathy Reichs

In commercial fiction especially, everything in the story usually contributes directly to the plot The shorter the story, the truer this is ~ Nancy Kress

What is the fire of inspiration that resides within, if not something to follow along a path? ~ Claire Fullerton

There are no new plots, but there are plenty of fresh new characters with whom you can grab the reader. Characterization is the key to successful commercial fiction. Characterization starts with goal, motivation, and conflict. Character ~ Debra Dixon

It was almost as if she had willed him into existence, into standing before her at the precise moment she was willing to accommodate him, arriving not a minute too early or too late. ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

In general, fiction is divided into 'literary fiction' and 'commercial fiction.' Nobody can definitively say what separates one from the other, but that doesn't stop everybody (including me) from trying. Your book probably will be perceived as one or the other, and that will affect how it is read, packaged and marketed. ~ Nancy Kress

I think there are readers out there and I don't think the book is dead. And more importantly I don't think readers have to choose between literary and commercial fiction. ~ Jodi Picoult

Most people surrendered fairy tale hopes in exchange for cookie cutter lives ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

I think any reading is good reading, even if it's commercial fiction. A good story well told is worth the time ~ Lynn Cahoon

For me, 'Bookends' marks the start of my foray into commercial fiction, away from what has always been thought of as more traditional chick lit - single girl in the city trips around in Manolos looking for Mr. Right. ~ Jane Green

It is one of the great bafflements of student fiction. I have read that college students can spend up to ten hours a day on social media. But for the people they write about - also mostly college students - the internet barely exists. ~ Sigrid Nunez

I have a lot of blurring between fiction and non-fiction in so many of my works. For example, my first novel, 'When Nietzsche Wept,' has a great deal of non-fiction in it. I didn't create many characters at all. Almost all of them are historical characters that actually existed. ~ Irvin D. Yalom

Sex almost always disappoints me in novels. Everything can be said or done now, and that's what I often find: everything, a feeling of generality or dispersal. But in my experience, true sex is so particular, so peculiar to the person who yearns for it. Only he or she, and no one else, would desire so very much that very person under those circumstances. In fiction, I miss that sense of terrific specificity. ~ Anatole Broyard

You have to know accounting. It's the language of practical business life. It was a very useful thing to deliver to civilization. I've heard it came to civilization through Venice which of course was once the great commercial power in the Mediterranean. However, double entry bookkeeping was a hell of an invention. ~ Charlie Munger

While I find inspiration in real life, the actual stories are, thankfully, works of fiction - which, given the considerable turmoil in my character's lives, is probably a good thing! ~ Nicholas Sparks

When you introduce things that most readers have never seen before into a piece of fiction, you have to describe them with as much precision and in as much detail as possible. What you can eliminate from fiction is the description of things that most readers have seen. ~ Haruki Murakami

It's best to be alone when you are sad. I wanted to be myself and feel my strength slowly seeping back into me. ~ Benyamin

The wealthy white western minority of the world could not hope to prosper if most of the rest of mankind were foundering in hopeless poverty. Islands of plenty in a vast ocean of misery never have been a good recipe for commercial success. ~ Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson Of Lodsworth

The rocket that goes up next March will not only lift a payload, it will launch what I believe will ultimately be the most significant commercial space facility in the country, ... This launch will be a brilliant signal flare that will let the nation and the world know New Mexico's spaceport is open for business. We can now say with certainty that the dream of this spaceport launching a new era in New Mexico's aerospace industry will become reality. ~ Bill Richardson

For me, at least, fiction is the only way i can even begin to twist my lying memories into something true. ~ John Green

Coincidence sometimes happens as in a fairy tale. Wong was in an emotional state of mind. Still smoking opium, he thought about Kwang's long-dead father, who had arrived in Singapore from Amoy on the junk Nam Hong. The opium den now felt bare and lonely without all the old vibrations. It was also dark and damp and the small kerosene lamp was running low on fuel. Wong added more kerosene and mumbled to himself, "Tonight I am going to smoke my way to heaven! ~ Ming Cher

I'd never beat you black and blue. I aim for pink.
Christian Grey ~ E.L. James

I am also an author. Please check out my novel, A Life Worth Dreaming About. ~ Nicholas Dettmann

You do a drama, and you are limited by the rules of reality, and in science fiction, you create your own reality. Some people find that daunting; I find it challenging. ~ David Twohy

The degree of rigidity is a matter of profound interest in the study of literary fictions. As an extreme case you will find some novel, probably contemporary with yourself, in which the departure from a basic paradigm, the peripeteia in the sense I am now giving it, seems to begin with the first sentence. The schematic expectations of the reader are discouraged immediately. Since by definition one seeks the maximum peripeteia (in this extended sense) in the fiction of one's own time, the best instance I can give is from Alain Robbe-Grillet. He refuses to speak of his 'theory' of the novel; it is the old ones who talk about the need for plot, character, and so forth, who have the theories. And without them one can achieve a new realism, and a narrative in which 'le temps se trouve coupé de la temporalité. Il ne coule plus.' And so we have a novel in which,. the reader will find none of the gratification to be had from sham temporality, sham causality, falsely certain description, clear story. The new novel 'repeats itself, bisects itself, modifies itself, contradicts itself, without even accumulating enough bulk to constitute a past--and thus a "story," in the traditional sense of the word.' The reader is not offered easy satisfactions, but a challenge to creative co-operation. ~ Frank Kermode

He wants to be perceived as a hero to people who have been bullied and not as a deranged lunatic who committed mass murder without rational explanation . . . ~ Mark M. Bello

I could probably make more money if I did more commercial projects. ~ Blake Lively

Beyond the queues, the vacancy screens listed jobs in a multitude of languages. Invariably, they were low-paid and short-term dead-ends. Nearby, people in headphones sat at a bank of machines: the blind and the illiterate force-fed with 'opportunities' by soothing machine voices. On the far wall, in large print, a poster declared: BEGGARS CANNOT BE CHOOSERS. ~ Mark Cantrell

She stands facing me to take off the helmet. When she does, she shakes her dark hair free. It looks like something a girl in a shampoo commercial might do. I have no doubt she doesn't have a clue how sexy she is. But she is. Holy hell, is she ever! ~ M. Leighton

We share a bond. We do everything together. We have a piece of strong, invisible thread connecting us. It's indestructible – it can never be broken. The thread is the key item that links us together. We understand each other. ~ Erica Sehyun Song

Valentine's Day purely commercial, cynical enterprise, anyway. Matter of supreme indifference to me. ~ Helen Fielding

If you start looking at movies on a moral level - "I don't like that, that hurts, that's mean, that's bad" - then I don't even want to talk to you. Or like, someone that says "I don't like science-fiction movies," or "I don't want to sit through a Western," or "I don't like violence in movies," then I completely tune out. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

I'm going to see you now Papa… you better run... ~ A.J. Vega

Big Eve had asked her to seduce Helios in order to secure a victory in the fight for his support & she had agreed to do so knowing full well that no action on her part would be necessary. Big Eve should know that all men were born animals, & as long as a girl made it known that she was prepared to accept a man`s advances, those advances would happen on their own accord. Her little experience with the male sex had taught her that. Thus, if she desired to seduce Helios, all she had to do was to make it known that she was prepared to accept his advances.[MMT] ~ Nicholas Chong

I was in a commercial for the Disney channel. I was the camp leader for the campers. ~ Olesya Rulin

If a woman chooses to support her husband and become First Lady, I believe she must do so with the understanding that the public expects the full-meal deal. ~ Venita Ellick

He had gone again and, emboldened by his first successful trip, had chosen a different sort of world to enter, that of THE MONK. He had studied the book with great care and finally selected a passage that was purely descriptive.

The result was the same. The instant he closed the top of the showcase, he was transported to the world described in the open pages. He found himself standing - and shivering - in a dank corridor that, he knew, was far underground. Feeble candlelight flickered in the distance, off to his left. Water dripped down the gleaming walls and startled rats scurried past his feet. The air was stale and unpleasant. Down the corridor to his left, he could hear singing but could not make out the words. Then suddenly, from his right, he heard a woman's high-pitched scream, its sound caroming off the wet, stone walls of the passageway. He jumped, his skin crawling at the back of his neck.

And found himself back in his warm and familiar room.

("I Shall Not Leave England Now") ~ Alan Ryan

I just saved your fucking life, Mom ... You could at least offer me an Oreo. ~ Neal Stephenson

Because once you give your body to a guy, there's no taking it back. And once you've done that it opens up feelings, emotions and vulnerabilities you never knew you were capable of having. I'm not ready to give him my heart. What if he breaks it? ~ J. Sterling

It was as if his fingers knew things, but they couldn't show him unless they were moving, touching. He had to think it was similar for carpenters and writers, and he knew it was the same for chefs. ~ Laura Lippman

There's always time for arguin' when you're a Fuentes. ~ Simone Elkeles

As I rock down the hall I am flung from my path- snatched and grabbed. Before I can even utter a word, a large palm is covering my mouth. In less than five seconds I am inside a pitch black room, pushed face first into a cold metal door, and I hear the lock snick into place. A heavy weight presses at my back. I didn't even have time to panic. It was a well-timed attack.
My mind flashes to another time and place, another hand on my mouth. I breathe though the panic that tries to overcome me.
I allow my senses to put me at ease. He's just softly breathing near my ear. His body is relaxed. The way he holds me feels more playful than threatening.
"Let me guess ... the Boss," I say to the heavy weight at my back. My tone is a mix of amused annoyance. ~ Erica Chilson

The government needs the help of industry. But the reality is companies will balance that against their own commercial interest in a very competitive market. ~ Michael Clarke Duncan