Eco Fiction Quotes

Terrible drought, crops dead, sheep dying. Spring dried up. No water. The Hopi, and the Christian, maybe the Moslem, they pray for rain. The Navajo has the proper ceremony done to restore himself to harmony with the drought. You see what I mean. The system is designed to recognize what's beyond human power to change, and then to change the human's attitude to be content with the inevitable. - Tony Hillerman, Sacred Clowns, 1993 ~ Tony Hillerman

I had passed through the entire British education system studying literature, culminating in three years of reading English at Oxford, and they'd never told me about something as basic as the importance of point of view in fiction! ~ Philip Pullman

He pulled me toward him, and all I could do was stand there with arms at my sides and head against his chest. Broken, I feared even the slightest movement would cause pieces of me to snap off and fall to the gritty pavement. ~ Jodi LaPalm

The image that fiction presents is purged of the distractions, confusions and accidents of ordinary life. ~ Robert Penn Warren

There was clairvoyance to their words and a tenderness in their inflections that instilled even in the most cynical of male hearts that faith and fate weren't just words, they were our guides and as long as you kept your heart open, sooner or later love would find its way into it. ~ Eric Monsky

The fire crackled. On Jutaire, without oxygen, the fire is different. Fed by different air. Maybe it wishes it were orange, for it sputters and reaches up to the sky with angry fists of blue and purple. It still doesn't know we can't all get what we want. ~ Hafsah Faizal

I am human and I have feelings too.
It is okay to give yourself me time.
It is okay to be all about you.
It is okay to be in your own world.
YOU DESERVE THAT! ~ Charlena E. Jackson

So why had he come? He'd said he'd had no choice, but for centuries men had chopped off their own limbs, faked insanity, gone into hiding or to prison rather than to war. Was there some dark flaw in his psyche? Did he have some perverse need to destroy? To kill? ~ Dominique Wilson

Irrationality is part of everyday rationale ~ Elif Shafak

If you can lean from your mistakes, then you're better off for it. It might not be something you can look back on proudly, but you can use what you've learned to make your future something to be proud of. ~ Melissa Jagears

All they're trying to do is tell you what they're like, and what you're like - what's going on - what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies. "The truth against the world!" - Yes. Certainly. Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I wanted to be ready.
I had thought I was ready.
I really believed I was ready.
That is, until the milk came. ~ Kathryn Michaels

Forgiving himself came easy to him. His, he'd come to realize, was a forgiving nature. ~ Lawrence Block

Halfway to the house Stan stopped and turned to Jane.
He put his hands on her shoulders and drew her toward him.
"I'm glad we're going steady," he whispered.
"So am I."
In spite of the reassuring weight of his bracelet on her wrist, Jane suddenly felt shy. It seemed strange to be so close to Stan, to feel his crisp clean shirt against her cheek. She could not look up at him. Gently Stan lifted her face to his. "You're my girl," he whispered.
-Fifteen ~ Beverly Cleary

To be a great writer you must be fearless with your words. ~ Karmel Graham

I love the idea that more people would read short fiction. I think it's such a humanizing form. It softens the boundaries between people. ~ George Saunders

The Israel stories were really hard for me to write, because I think that my book is very much about politics, but it isn't political. It really was important for me to not have a political agenda at all, because I have a hard time stomaching any political fiction that feels message-y. ~ Molly Antopol

Remember what he said about my picture: I'm lovely and it made him do double cartwheels. Remember also that he's prone to hyperbole, so don't take everything he says literally. ~ Juliet Ayres

Oh, I love to read more than anything. I always love the 'New Stories From the South' anthologies - I think it's the best short fiction collection anywhere, just filled with treasures. ~ Lucy Alibar

Not many have escaped Merthyr, Mam. Not many want to leave in any case. At least there is
work in this valley, people come near and far to work here, so we should be glad of that... - Lily - Black Diamonds. ~ Lynette Rees

Come on, it's an American tradition. Apple soup? Mom's homemade chicken pie?'
She chuckled in spite of herself, then winced. 'It's apple pie and Mom's homemade chicken soup. But you didn't do badly, for a start. ~ L.J.Smith

When fiction rises pleasing to the eye, men will believe, because they love the lie; but truth herself, if clouded with a frown, must have some solemn proof to pass her down. ~ Charles Churchill

I've learned, from working with translators over the years, that the original novel is, in a way, a translation itself. It is not, of course, translated into another language but it is a translation from the images in the author's mind to that which he is able to put down on paper. Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write. It's one of the heartbreaks of writing fiction. You have, for months or years, been walking around with the idea of a novel in your mind, and in your mind it's transcendent, it's brilliantly comic and howlingly tragic, it contains everything you know, and everything you can imagine, about human life on the planet earth. It is vast and mysterious and awe-inspiring. It is a cathedral made of fire. But even if the book in question turns out fairly well, it's never the book that you'd hoped to write. It's smaller than the book you'd hoped to write. It is an object, a collection of sentences, and it does not remotely resemble a cathedral made of fire. It feels, in short, like a rather inept translation of a mythical great work. The translator, then, is simply moving the book another step along the translation continuum. The translator is translating a translation. ~ Michael Cunningham

People cheer on tyrants for fear of becoming targets. ~ Andrew Sturm

Literature is the real life of imaginary people. ~ Stefanos Livos

Hephaestus told Phyllis that she owed her name to the lovely girl whom Acamas left behind in Thrace after the Trojan War, promising to return.The poor girl waited in vain & out of desparation, hanged herself.The Goddess Nemesis took pity on the girl & turned her into a leafless almond tree.When Acamas at last returned,he was overcome with grief & embraced the tree which immediately sprouted green leaves, which gave the Greeks their word "phylla" meaning "green leaves" & all the botanists of the world their "phylla" words.Hephaestus also said that Vicky stood for Victory[Nike].[MMT] ~ Nicholas Chong

In "The Myth of Sisyphus", his most important non-fiction work, Albert Camus suggested that if we believed what most people claim to be the purpose of life, we would feel compelled to commit suicide. If, however, we accept that life has no purpose we would be inclined to soldier on in a cussed, stoical manner like Sisyphus, endlessly pushing his rock up a hill only to see it roll down again. ~ Philip French

Mermaids are not what humans believe them to be. ~ J.K. Ervin

I realize that, to many readers, Hard Fantasy may seem to be a contradiction in terms. Fantasy, according to most generally recognized definitions, differs from both 'real world' fiction and 'science fiction' in that magic or magical creatures are active elements. ~ Jane Lindskold

What I've always been most interested in is exposing the way stories and fantasies reconstitute our everyday reality. What appears to be non-fiction is not only totally mysterious, unfathomable, and strange when you really look at what it is. ~ Joshua Oppenheimer

The mind is the reality. You are what you think. ~ Alfred Bester

I think every fiction writer, to a certain extent, is a schizophrenic and able to have two or three or five voices in his or her body. We seek, through our profession, to get those voices onto paper. ~ Ridley Pearson

Fiction writers, magicians, politicians and priests are the only people rewarded for entertaining us with their lies ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

For the first time in years, I have vivid dreams, vivid enough to count the stars and the number of ripples in the sea. ~ Brittany Weekley

I am the shadow of the flame. ~ Victoria Aveyard

I reckon it's true what they say that good begets good and bad begets bad. The evil men do lives on after them, but what good they done gets buried with their bones. ~ Lisa Kaye Presley

A pure crystal stream sprang laughing in the midst of desolation...... ~ Sue Bridgwater

Looking at that pain in her eyes, he felt a closeness with her that he had never experienced before. Like they shared something powerful and unspoken, something so deep and devastating, it bonded them together. He knew then, that if she didn't forgive him, he would never survive.

He was nothing without her. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

....looking for God in everyday stuff. Something I definitely needed to practice more. ~ Jennifer Rodewald

I don't think humanity just replays history, but we are the same people our ancestors were, and our descendants are going to face a lot of the same situations we do. It's instructive to imagine how they would react, with different technologies on different worlds. That's why I write science fiction
even though the term 'science fiction' excites disdain in certain persons. ~ Kage Baker

There's no such thing as fiction or imagination, as they're merely non-fiction manifestations in the wrong parallel universe. ~ Daniel Marques

Writing fiction feels like an adventurous act, nudging aside reality a word at a time. ~ James Van Pelt

His hands were magnets - shifting polarities - drawn and repelled to the unknown parts of another man's body. ~ Cory Ingram