General Fiction Quotes

General fiction is pretty much about ways that people get into problems and screw their lives up. Science fiction is about everything else. ~ Marvin Minsky

The primary goal of publishing general fiction and non-fiction was never profit - though profit was essential to stay in the game. Publishing is a vocation in which the work is its own reward, an insufficient goal for today's conglomerates. ~ Jason Epstein

A laconic and highly entertaining" novel. "The characters are strong, each showing major evidence of being a product of their respective cultures. Overall, the story is a strong one, with a couple of well-executed twists that succeed in surprising the reader."

- Publishers Weekly judge for the 2014 ABNA Contest, Two Brides for Ewan de Buchan


"I love historical romance novels and this one right off the bat based on the plot/hook made me want to read more. I devoured this...and re-read it twice. It seems like the author has a very good handle on the time period in which this novel is set."

- 2014 ABNA Contest judge, Two Brides for Ewan de Buchan


"I think this is really well crafted and interesting. The plot/hook caught me from the first paragraph. The characters are well done and I really loved the novelist's attention to historical detail...It's a really great romance novel, and is of publication quality. This novelist has a real future in writing romance (or even general fiction) books."

- 2014 ABNA Contest judge, Two Brides for Ewan de Buchan ~ E. Elizabeth Watson

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

She will toss the leaves in a wooden bowl with a micro spray of olive oil, a drop of balsamic vinegar, the insanely expensive balsamic vinegar that she bought at the gourmet store, so viscous it drips in a slow, thick stream. A tomato. A Persian cucumber. These will emerge, pristine, from her tiny refrigerator, chilled, perfect. She will slice them thinly and fan them into beautiful patterns, a vegetable mandala, courtesy of the mandoline, a feast for the eyes. She will hand-crumple Parmigiano Reggiano onto the top, and then, from on high, she will brandish the mill and grind coarse crystals of pink salt form the Himalayas into fine, sparkly shavings that will float, like snowflakes, onto the pale green surface of her salad. ~ Janice Y.K. Lee

In the general fiction section Ava discovered a well-thumbed edition of the latest bestseller. One million copies sold! Pah again! She cracked the book open at the spine, knew just where the join was weakest. She laid it open like a sacrificial goat on the carped, hidden between the shelves of books. Then she unleashed her machete, samurai-warrior style, and raising it above her head brought it down, and cleaved the book in twain, splitting it down the middle like a coconut. And that was when, seeing the scimitar rise again, the librarian screamed. ~ Mark O'Flynn

The Deepest Night*

As we lay
asleep within our suspended animation
chambers - living coffins
our thoughts chase each other as they
entwine together

With our bodies
separated by a transparent aluminum partition
our minds connected
telepathically hug and kiss as we continue to
love each other

At the end
of our thousand lightyear journey
when our bodies
awake - thaw out - become warm again
within each others arms

We'll find ourselves
our passions burning all the hotter
forever brighter
into a supernova our love shall blossom
within the deepest night

Copyright David M. Green 2014 ~ David M. Green

In America, there are people who don't read science fiction but still think about tomorrow, so it's not only the force of science-fiction that makes you a tomorrow thinker. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The aims of scientific thought are to see the general in the particular and the eternal in the transitory. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Perhaps this general degradation was the result of too much crowding, too little privacy, too much noise. You couldn't be decent if you weren't intelligent; you couldn't be intelligent if you couldn't think - and who could think in all this racket? Add the stench to the confusion of cramped quarters, and who could be self-respecting? ~ Lloyd C. Douglas

Though in this genre we write about the fantastic, the stories work best when there is solid grounding in our world. Magic works best for me when it aligns with scientific principles. Worldbuilding works best when it draws from sources in our world. Characters work best when they're grounded in solid human emotion and experience. ~ Brandon Sanderson

GENERAL MAXIMS FOR HEALTH. Rise early. Eat simple food. Take plenty of exercise. Never fear a little fatigue. Let not children be dressed in tight clothes; it is necessary their limbs and muscles should have full play, if you wish for either health or beauty. Avoid the necessity of a physician, if you can, by careful attention to your diet. Eat what best agrees with your system, and resolutely abstain from what hurts you, however well you may like it. A few days' abstinence, and cold water for a beverage, has driven off many an approaching disease. If you find yourself really ill, send for a good physician. Have nothing to do with quacks; ~ Lydia Maria Francis Child

I used to write my own versions of famous tales, such as William Tell or Robin Hood, and illustrate them myself, too. When I entered my teens, I got more into horror and science fiction and wrote a lot of short stories. A literary education complicated things and for many years I wrote nothing but poetry. Then I got back to story-telling. ~ Peter Robinson

New fiction writers are a special breed in my estimation, and I never dreamed that so many people would be interested, but I remember being led by God. ~ Tim LaHaye

If somebody loves you, you accept it because you love yourself. You are happy with yourself; somebody else is happy - good! It does not get in your head, it does not make you madly egoistic. You simply enjoy yourself; somebody else also finds you enjoyable - good! While it lasts, live the fiction as beautifully as possible - it will not last forever. That, ~ Osho

Dead man shouldn't have no fears. Makes his passing easier. ~ Samuel Snoek-Brown

Spilling a Secret

What its size,
will have varying
consequences. It's not
possible to predict
what will happen
if you
open the gunnysack,
let the cat escape.
A liberated feline
might purr on your lap,
or it might scratch
your eyes out. You can't
tell
until you loosen the knot.
Do you chance losing
a friendship, if that
friend's well-being
will
only be preserved
by betraying sworn-to
silence trust? Once
the seam is ripped, can
it be
mended again?
And if that proves
impossible, will you be
okay
when it all falls to pieces? ~ Ellen Hopkins

When he unleashes on her everything falls together. Like a crick in the neck snapped into place, the boy's brain pops and is put right. It is a beautiful undoing, a beautiful becoming. He doesn't stop to think about it when the punches follow her down to the ground. He doesn't stop to notice when she goes still or when the pool of blood under her head pillows out into a great, liquid heart. He doesn't stop until he's pulled off her and he doesn't start to think again until that night, when he's back at home. For hours and hours his brain stays beautifully popped into place. ~ Carolyn Lee Adams

General Motors is alive and kicking today, it is because in 2009 President Obama's administration wrote off 90 percent of its debt. ~ Yanis Varoufakis

The historian Major-General Sir David Stewart of Garth described them as an 'excellent, orderly regiment of well-behaved serviceable men, fit for any duty' and the novelist Sir Walter Scott used his journal to call them a 'regiment of Sutherland giants'. (One of their number was Samuel McDonald, a native of Lairg, who was seven feet four inches tall. Throughout the army he was known as 'Big Sam'.) ~ Trevor Royle

Contrary to the general belief about photography, you don't need bright sunlight: the best moodiest pictures are taken in the dim light of almost dusk, or of rainy days ... ~ Jack Kerouac

Contrary to popular belief, the helpful words that open the way to great, dramatic dialogues are, in general, modest, ordinary, banal, no one would think that Would you like a cup of coffee could serve as an introduction to a bitter debate about feelings that have died or to the sweetness of a reconciliation that neither person knows how to bring about. ~ Jose Saramago

Writing fiction is not a profession that leaves one well-disposed toward reading fiction. One starts out loving books and stories, and then one becomes jaded and increasingly hard to please. I read less and less fiction these days, finding the buzz and the joy I used to get from fiction in ever stranger works of non-fiction, or poetry. ~ Neil Gaiman

With his hair tied back and about three days worth of beard Win looked more like a vagrant than a comm guru. Except for those keen, blue eyes. Eyes currently alive with that uncomfortable piercing quality, as if he were reading his mind. ~ Marcha A. Fox

Well, I hate to admit it, but it is possible that there is (one) such a thing as telepathy and (two) that the CETI project's idea that we might communicate with extraterrestrial beings via telepathy is possibly a reasonable idea
if telepathy exists and if ETIs exist. Otherwise we are trying to communicate with someone who doesn't exist with a system which doesn't work. ~ Philip K. Dick

Art exhibitions would be less censored if they were rated, G or NC-17, like movies. People in general see galleries and museums as family-appropriate excursions. Censorship is a provided system which caters to lazy parenting, which is publicly-funded and socially accepted. ~ Adamo Macri

Science fiction encourages us to explore ... all the futures, good and bad, that the human mind can envision. ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

The best way to take our minds off our own troubles is to help someone else with theirs. ~ Karen Witemeyer

The world isn't kind to the ordinary anymore. ~ Mina V. Esguerra

I've gone for each type: the rough guy; the nerdy, sweet, lovable guy; and the slick guy. I don't really have a type. Men in general are a good thing. ~ Jennifer Aniston

Carl responding to something Camilla did, "The next time you touch my equipment, I'm going to puncture your silicon boobs and then claim it happened because you resisted arrest after threatening to slug me with one of your brother's trophies. When I slap the cuffs on you, and you're waiting for the doctor as you stare at the blank white wall of a prison cell in Hillerod, you'll dream about taking back that pat you just gave me. Shall we proceed, or do do have anything to add regarding my nobler parts? ~ Jussi Adler-Olsen

A community that engages readers and culturally enabled people to connect, support and harness intellectual and cultural capabilities. ~ Ashwin Sanghi

The general plot of life is sometimes shaped by the different ways genuine intelligence combines with equally genuine ignorance. ~ Lucy Grealy

I am not in the business of predicting general stock market of business fluctuations. If you think I can do this, or think it is essential to an investment program, you should not be in the partnership. ~ Warren Buffett

The commanding general publishes, for the information of all concerned, that hereafter all persons found within our lines who commit acts for the benefit of the enemies of our country will be tried as spies or traitors, and, if convicted, will suffer death. ~ Ambrose Burnside

enter the world of things as they are ~ Neil Gaiman

In general, anyone who paid the long distance telephone tax will get the refund on their 2006 federal income tax return. This includes individuals, businesses and non-profit organizations. ~ Virgil Goode

It is an old adage, "All is fair in love as in war," but I thought not of general laws, and only felt a private grievance. ~ Jane Swisshelm

There's an infantilization that happens to actresses in general - musical theatre, straight theatre, television, film - we're spoken to like children. Actors are spoken to like children a lot of the time. ~ Laura Benanti

Historical facts are the vital framework around which non-fiction writers construct their narratives; they are, quite simply, indispensable. ~ Saul David

Going for it and changing what you could change-that's what success was all about. ~ Julie Garwood

In general, exchange reactions for the lighter isotopes have equilibrium constants sufficiently different from unity, so that the ratios of concentrations of the isotopes in two compounds which are in equilibrium differ by a few per cents in nearly all cases. ~ Harold Urey

Fenworth nodded. "Yes, yes. Urgent, deadly, insidious. The world is in peril and we must rise against evil." The old wizard released the general and patted him on the shoulder. "Tea and cake first, don't you think? ~ Donita K. Paul

We're in a strange relationship with our fiction, you see. Sometimes we fear it's taking us over, sometimes we beg to be taken over by it. ~ Warren C. Ellis

Stricken by a guilty conscience, some men will say that I speak with excessive temerity about all men in general. They are greatly mistaken. If they behave justly, they will be protected from my attacks and those of others. I separate the just from the wicked (who are the subject of my discourse), since not all men are bad and not all women are good. ~ Arcangela Tarabotti

I am making an argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings. Michael Foucault's biopolitics is a flaccid premonition of cyborg politics, a very open field. ~ Donna J. Haraway