Fiction Novels Quotes

Not long ago, after my last trip to Russia, I had a conversation with an American very eminent in the field of politics. I asked what he read, and he replied that he studied history, sociology, politics and law.

"How about fiction - novels, plays poetry?" I asked.

"No," he said, "I have never had time for them. There's so much else I have to read."

I said, "Sir, I have recently visited Russia for the third time and don't know how well I understand Russians; but I do know that if I only read Russian history I could not have had the access to Russian thinking I have had from reading Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin, Turgenev, Sholokhov, and Ehrenburg. History only recounts, with some inaccuracy, what they did. The fiction tells, or tries to tell, why they did it and what they felt and were like when they did it."

My friend nodded gravely. "I hadn't though of that," he said. "Yes, that might be so; I had always thought of fiction as opposed to fact."

But in considering the American past, how poor we would be in information without Huckleberry Fin, An American Tragedy, Winesburg, Ohio, Main Street, The Great Gatsby, and As I Lay Dying. ~ John Steinbeck

We've had science fiction novels where China is dominant; we've had novels where India is dominant, and I suppose it's all about getting away from that cliched old tired idea that the future belongs to the West. ~ Alastair Reynolds

[Author's Note:] When I was sixteen, two of my cousins were brutally raped by four strangers and thrown off a bridge in St. Louis, Missouri. My brother was beaten and also forced off the bridge. I wrote about that horrible crime in my first book, my memoir, A Rip in Heaven. Because that crime and the subsequent writing of the book were both formative experience in my life, I became a person who is always, automatically, more interested in stories about victims than perpetrators. I'm interested in characters who suffer inconceivable hardship, in people who manage to triumph over extraordinary trauma. Characters like Lydia and Soledad. I'm less interested in the violent, macho stories of gangsters and law enforcement. Or in any case, I think the world has enough stories like those. Some fiction set in the world of the cartels and narcotraficantes is compelling and important - I read much of it during my early research. Those novels provide readers with an understanding of the origins of the some of the violence to our south. But the depiction of that violence can feed into some of the worst stereotypes about Mexico. So I saw an opening for a novel that would press a little more intimately into those stories, to imagine people on the flip side of that prevailing narrative. Regular people like me. How would I manage if I lived in a place that began to collapse around me? If my children were in danger, how far would I go to save them? I wanted to write about women, whose stories a ~ Jeanine Cummins

Fiction novels, that's my game. ~ David Benioff

Cities controlled by big companies are old hat in science fiction. My grandmother left a whole bookcase of old science fiction novels. The company-city subgenre always seemed to star a hero who outsmarted, overthrew, or escaped "the company." I've never seen one where the hero fought like hell to get taken in and underpaid by the company. In real life, that's the way it will be. That's the way it always is. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Jigsaw Lady is the working title of a science fiction novel I've had in my head for darn near 15 years. I think I'll start work on it next year (in all my spare time) but I'd like to get it finished some day. ~ Raymond E. Feist

My dad was always such a frustrated artist. He always worked very hard to support his family, doing a bunch of ridiculous jobs. He wanted to be a painter, but then he also wrote science-fiction novels in his spare time. ~ Rainn Wilson

In the past, it was only in science fiction novels that you could read about ordinary people being able to go to space ... But you laid the foundation for space tourism. ~ Nursultan Nazarbayev

The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say 'I read a science fiction novel that says it's not a problem.' You take action. ~ Al Gore

Women create an idealized, hopeful vision for the future to inspire other women. Fiction and fantasy are the crucial first steps to changing the world. ~ Maya Rodale

All of fiction is truthful. What you create is your own truth and no one can take that away or change it. ~ Walter Dean Myers

Carver's best book yet! FROM A CHANGELING STAR combines deft characterization and fascinating extrapolation into a complex, compulsively readable thriller. I wish all science fiction novels could be this good. ~ Craig Shaw Gardner

I was someone who really loved fantasy novels and science fiction novels. ~ Matthew Tobin Anderson

I really enjoy mysteries, well-written fiction novels, historical novels, and the occasional vampire, wolf, human triangle as long as it's real ~ Michael Connelly

Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the art that speaks it most unmistakably, most directly, most variously, most fully, is fiction; in particular, the novel. ~ Eudora Welty

Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world. ~ Paul Auster

My spirit has been around far longer than my soul
I've lived several lifetimes already. And one this novel has been written, I will have lived several more. ~ Terry A. O'Neal

Science Fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story. In it, as in all fiction, there is room enough to keep even Man where he belongs, in his place in the scheme of things, there is time enough to gather plenty of wild oats and sow them, too, and sing to little Oom, and listen to Ool's joke, and watch newts, and still the story isn't over. Still there are seeds to be gathered and room in the bag of stars. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Faction is that hybrid of documented fact and novelistic elaboration. ~ Norman Mailer

Wrote a science fiction novel about a man who wins an argument with his wife, but it was rejected for being too farfetched. ~ Dana Gould

I came, I saw, I concurred... ~ Darren E. Laws

I don't remember learning to read, but the first thing I remember reading is a science fiction novel. ~ Vonda N. McIntyre

I had bohemian parents in Seattle in the last '60s living in a houseboat. My dad wrote science fiction novels and painted big murals and oil paintings. ~ Rainn Wilson

Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Labels don't mean much to me one way or another
except when they close the minds of potential readers. I'd much rather we do away with genres and simply file everything under fiction. I know it can work
one of my favourite record stores (Waterloo Music in Austin) simply files everything alphabetically and no one seems to have much problem finding what they're looking for. ~ Charles De Lint

Traditionally, people have been adapting novels and short stories forever. Now, they're doing it simultaneously, with an eye towards writing the movie before the novel has even come out or been finished. It's a function of this hyper-accelerated society we live in, where everyone is trying to short circuit the process. ~ Howard Gordon

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

I am very much afraid that to the fiction writer the fact that we shall always have the poor with us is a source of satisfaction,for it means, essentially, that he will always be able to find someone like himself. ~ Flannery O'Connor

They walked through the rainy dark like gaunt ghosts, and Garraty didn't like to look at them. They were the walking dead. ~ Stephen King

I have been in recent years the author of a bestiary and director of some atlas projects; I've written criticism, editorials, reports from a few front lines, letters, a great many political essays ... , more personal stuff, essays for artists' books, and more ... Nonfiction is the whole realm from investigative journalism to prose poems, from manifestos to love letters, from dictionaries to packing lists. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Kindness is not something you are born with; it's a way in which you choose to be. ~ Lisa Kaye Presley

So for a long time, I did a lot of freelance writing in addition to writing fiction and such - I was a food critic for a magazine for a bit, I did writing for nonprofits and political things, I was the editorial consultant for another magazine for a couple years, all sorts of jobs. ~ Tod Goldberg

Writing fiction for money is a mug's game. ~ Stephen King

I grew up reading 19th-century novels and late Victorian children's books, so I try for a good story full of coincidence and error, landscape and weather. However, the world was radically changed during my lifetime, and I tell of that battering as best I can. ~ Fanny Howe

As writers we intend to make a difference, to alter people's lives for the greater good ... this is why we write, to have an impact on society, to put a personal stamp on history ... Art and literature are the legacies we leave to succeeding generations. We'll be forgotten, but our books and essays, our stories and poems can survive us ... ~ Lee Gutkind

I'll be as loving as you will be, as stubborn as I know you are, as passionate as I'm thankful you are and as supportive and understanding as I've known you to be. You are my best friend and I love you ~ Danielle-Claude Ngontang Mba

Science Fiction is the jazz of literature. ~ David Brin

You sing about the things you're influenced by. So we've been big into sci-fi since we were kids, things like Star Trek etc. Then came movies like Terminator and Dune. Burton is also a really big reader and loves sci-fi novels which helps him write. It's also really cool he does that because it's through the perspective of how we see things going or possibly going. ~ Dino Cazares

The Freaks are coming. ~ J.O. Young

In New York I was always so scared of saying that I wrote fiction. It just seemed like, 'Who am I to dare to do that thing here? The epicenter of publishing and writers?' I found all that very intimidating and avoided writing as a response. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

Many of my favorite survivors in fiction show that it may not be the most muscled, macho or mighty people who pull through. A strong mind and body aren't always enough. You might also need a resilient heart. ~ Claire Cameron

We get so many people saying short fiction is not economical, that it doesn't sell; but there are so many of us enjoying writing it and reading it. So it's wonderful to be around people who love short fiction too - it's like hanging around with my tribe. ~ Junot Diaz

Where are they, the American fiction writers whose works are interested in the question "What do these people have to do with us?" and "What are we doing out there in the world? ~ Kamila Shamsie

Since I became a novelist I have discovered that I am biased. Either I think a new novel is worse than mine and I don't like it, or I suspect it is better than my novels and I don't like it. ~ Umberto Eco

Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction. ~ David Brin

Space Rockets as Power Symbols

The moon rocket is the climactic expression of the power system: the maximum utilization of the resources of science and technics for the achievement of a relatively miniscule result: the hasty exploration of a barren satellite. Space exploration by manned rockets enlarges and intensifies all the main components of the power system: increased energy, accelerated motion, automation, cyber-nation, instant communication, remote control. Though it has been promoted mainly under military pressure, the most vital result of moon visitation so far turns out to be an unsought and unplanned one-a full view of the beautiful planet we live on, an inviting home for man and for all forms of life. This distant view on television evoked for the first time an active, loving response from many people who had hitherto supposed that modern technics would soon replace Mother Earth with a more perfect, scientifically organized, electronically controlled habitat, and who took for granted that this would be an improvement. Note that the moon rocket is itself necessarily a megastructure: so it naturally calls forth such vulgar imitations as the accompanying bureaucratic obelisk (office building) of similar dimensions, shown here (left). Both forms exhibit the essentially archaic and regressive nature of the science-fiction mind. ~ Lewis Mumford

Eli was a good businessman precisely because he never took 'no' for an answer. He wasn't about to start when it came to the most important deal of his life. ~ Alexa Rivers

I want to be a good man, a good writer."
"Be one or the other, Ernest, not both. ~ Naomi Wood

Some call us unnatural or demons, but that doesn't change the fact that we too were human once. We have feelings; we feel pain and there is no shame in wanting to live. ~ Karmen Lee

We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal. ~ Mario Vargas Llosa

That's great. Tell me about it. I hate my life. I'm at the point where I want to hear about other people's lives. it's like switching from fiction to biography. The beginning of the end. ~ Don DeLillo

Is the writer cruel that makes his characters suffer only to bring them to triumph or tragedy in the end? ~ Johnny Rich

An illusion is when everyone is in on the joke, a delusion is when you are the joke. ~ Austin Aragon

Some ghosts are so quiet you would hardly know they were there. ~ Bernie Mcgill

I never thought I could write fiction. ~ Jonathan Galassi