Humor Fiction Mystery Writing Quotes

The trouble with real life is that you don't know whether you're the hero or just some nice chap who gets bumped off in chapter five to show what a rotter the villain is without anyone minding too much. ~ Sarah Caudwell

If the writer believes that our life is and will remain essentially mysterious, if he looks upon us as beings existing in a created order to whose laws we freely respond, then what he sees on the surface will be of interest to him only as he can go through it into an experience of mystery itself. His kind of fiction will always be pushing its own limits outward toward the limits of mystery, because for this kind of writer, the meaning of a story does not begin except at a depth where adequate motivation and adequate psychology and the various determinations have been exhausted. Such a writer will be interested in what we don't understand rather than in what we do. He will be interested in possibility rather than probability. He will be interested in characters who are forced out to meet evil and grace and who act on a trust beyond themselves - whether they know clearly what it is they act upon or not. ~ Flannery O'Connor

My attention was like cooking butter, not spreadable at the best of times. And when it was spreadable, it could destroy your toast by setting it ablaze. I was unpredictable, even to myself. ~ Shoeburn Ruffet

That's our cue," Dr. Chadwick noted, managing to approximate a cheerful smile, addressing the room at large. "Everyone please stand behind the yellow line until the doors open. No food, drink, flash photography, or video cameras are permitted. Once aboard the ride, please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times until we come to a full and complete stop. Otherwise, they're apt to end up in another universe somewhere without ya, and wouldn't that fry your noggin? ~ Stephanie Osborn

Nice dress," Victoria said.
"Thank you," Perpetua said. "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"
Victoria blinked. "Uh, what? ~ Benjamin R. Smith

The northern star changes its position every ten thousand years, but friendships can last for all eternity.
- RJPeters ~ R.J. Peters

You're one tough egg to crack. You know that? You're like a Kinder egg wrapped inside a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. ~ Cassia Leo

I never thought I was capable of writing a whole book until Ursula K. Le Guin, with whom I worked briefly in publishing, said, 'you already wrote one (referencing a screenplay), you just need to add the details. ~ E.L. Sayers

When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story. ~ Charles Baxter

The writer is often faced with two choices
turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction. ~ Chinua Achebe

I started writing short stories. I tried writing horror, mystery, science fiction. I joined a little critique group here in town and ran my stories past them. After about three years, I tackled my first novel, Subterranean. It took me 11 months to write. ~ James Rollins

It was Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the television series, 1997-2003, not the lackluster movie that preceded it) that blazed the trail for Twilight and the slew of other paranormal romance novels that followed, while also shaping the broader urban fantasy field from the late 1990s onward.

Many of you reading this book will be too young to remember when Buffy debuted, so you'll have to trust us when we say that nothing quite like it had existed before. It was thrillingly new to see a young, gutsy, kick-ass female hero, for starters, and one who was no Amazonian Wonder Woman but recognizably ordinary, fussing about her nails, her shoes, and whether she'd make it to her high school prom. Buffy's story contained a heady mix of many genres (fantasy, horror, science-fiction, romance, detective fiction, high school drama), all of it leavened with tongue-in-cheek humor yet underpinned by the serious care with which the Buffy universe had been crafted. Back then, Whedon's dizzying genre hopping was a radical departure from the norm-whereas today, post-Buffy, no one blinks an eye as writers of urban fantasy leap across genre boundaries with abandon, penning tender romances featuring werewolves and demons, hard-boiled detective novels with fairies, and vampires-in-modern-life sagas that can crop up darn near anywhere: on the horror shelves, the SF shelves, the mystery shelves, the romance shelves. ~ Ellen Datlow

I would rather avoid disaster than take it out for dinner and a movie. - Chynna Lennox ~ Jim Cooper

Fiction ought to announce the problems, dramatize the problems, display them. Yet offer no set answer. An answer would solve the mystery. Writing fiction, for me, is about putting on paper my obsessive interest in something mysterious. I may figure out the source of the mystery, the things that brought some action or image to my mind, but to make an equation of it would ruin the story. ~ Antonya Nelson

Historical novels are about costumery. I think that's the magic and mystery of fiction. I don't want to write historical fiction but I do want the story to have the feel of history. There's a difference. ~ Chang-rae Lee

Now, if either of you should think of something, you ring me up. And, Detective Farthering "-he shook his finger at Drew-" you and that young Dennison scamp mind you don't interfere with police business. Do all the clever thinking you want, and when you get an idea, I'll be happy to hear it. But you let the police do the investigating. Do I make myself clear?"
"Why, Inspector, I never - ~ Julianna Deering

In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery ... ~ Flannery O'Connor

I grew up reading comic books, pulp books, mystery and science fiction and fantasy. I'm a geek; I make no pretensions otherwise. It's the stuff that I love writing about. I like creating worlds. ~ David S.Goyer

A mystery reader, confronted with a large mass of sudden detail, is going to go - subconsciously, at least - "Aha! somewhere in all of this the writer has planted a Clue!", and look for that; a reader trained exclusively in mainstream literary fiction is likely to say, "Aha! all this emphasis must point to something of Thematic Importance!", but an experienced reader of science fiction is going to assume that he or she is meant to take all of those details and out of them construct a world.

Which is why the writer of a science-fiction mystery with literary ambitions is trying to do a quadruple somersault off the trapeze without a net. ~ Debra Doyle

I could write historical fiction, or science fiction, or a mystery but since I find it fascinating to research the clues of some little know period and develop a story based on that, I will probably continue to do it. ~ Jean M. Auel

If you call a gypsy a vagabond, I think you do him wrong,
For he never goes a-travelling but he takes his home along.
And the only reason a road is good, as every wanderer knows,
Is just because of the homes, the homes, the homes to which it goes. ~ Joyce Kilmer

LIPID (Last Idiot Person I Dated) syndrome: a largely undiagnosed but pervasive disease that afflicts single women. ~ Lauren Willig

A great deal of a child's life is being asked and being told things by adults and not knowing the answers or what to do. So, I didn't say anything. ~ Shoeburn Ruffet

If something unusual is what you really see and really feel, and if that's what does happen to you in your real life, how is THAT called FICTION? One simple reason... that it's the only way the society would agree to call it "normal," based on the current level of development of their mentality. ~ Sahara Sanders

The truth is, everyone likes to look down on someone. If your favorites are all avant-garde writers who throw in Sanskrit and German, you can look down on everyone. If your favorites are all Oprah Book Club books, you can at least look down on mystery readers. Mystery readers have sci-fi readers. Sci-fi can look down on fantasy. And yes, fantasy readers have their own snobbishness. I'll bet this, though: in a hundred years, people will be writing a lot more dissertations on Harry Potter than on John Updike. Look, Charles Dickens wrote popular fiction. Shakespeare wrote popular fiction - until he wrote his sonnets, desperate to show the literati of his day that he was real artist. Edgar Allan Poe tied himself in knots because no one realized he was a genius. The core of the problem is how we want to define "literature". The Latin root simply means "letters". Those letters are either delivered - they connect with an audience - or they don't. For some, that audience is a few thousand college professors and some critics. For others, its twenty million women desperate for romance in their lives. Those connections happen because the books successfully communicate something real about the human experience. Sure, there are trashy books that do really well, but that's because there are trashy facets of humanity. What people value in their books - and thus what they count as literature - really tells you more about them than it does about the book. ~ Brent Weeks

Fiction is lies; we're writing about people who never existed and events that never happened when we write fiction, whether its science fiction or fantasy or western mystery stories or so-called literary stories. All those things are essentially untrue. But it has to have a truth at the core of it. ~ George R R Martin

My motto? Don't trust someone who is just as cagey as yourself."
"What kind of detective are you?" "A lousy one and proud of it. I write, remember?"
She looked down at her hand & laughed. "Berretta doesn't make lighters." "Why I was a writer! My life revolved around fiction. I could make something up"
"She looked down at her hand & laughed. "Berretta doesn't make lighters."
"So they're not Tolstoy, they're a little shorter ... Okay, okay a lot. Go ahead, read my mystery series anyway."
"A detective has their boundaries especially me. So mine shifted occasionally ... okay a lot"
"Beat it, Buster. My temper and this mace have a hair trigger."
"Interference could be lethal." I got right up in his face, hissing, "Don't push me, I'm hormonal."
I'm not really a lousy detective, just rough around the edges. ~ Peggy A. Edelheit

My father was a patient father. He was so patient that when he once saw a sign that read 'Patient Entrance' at the Welt Foot Hospital, he drove his automobile incredibly slow. ~ Shoeburn Ruffet

Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

There's something about the writing of a prose poem that seems to promise open land and distance in which you can lose yourself. (Sustained rapture?) Sometimes it's just good to have the illusion of being in a place without fences. Then you head out into it, it starts to change. The distance turns out to have all kinds of invisible obstacles requiring a leap or swerve, negotiation, a radical change in direction–it makes its demands on you, and maybe it turns out, after all, to be a poem, or something you hope might offer one more explanation for the mystery. ~ Nancy Eimers

In our world you got your mystery and suspense stories . . . your science fiction stories . . . your Westerns . . . your fairy tales. Get it?" "Yes," Roland said. "Do people in your world always want only one story-flavor at a time? Only one taste in their mouths?" "I guess that's close enough," Susannah said. "Does no one eat stew?" Roland asked. ~ Stephen King

In writing, you learn about the mystery of yourself. In reading you learn about the mystery of the world. Do both and you'll learn much. ~ Mark Rubinstein