Literary Fiction Quotes

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Quotes About Literary Fiction

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Every answer can be followed by another question. ~ Thomas Lloyd Qualls
Literary Fiction quotes by Thomas Lloyd Qualls
Time seemed to drag with dreamlike slowness, like a knife through cold honey, and the room took on a surreal golden sheen as if I was looking through that same jar of honey. Maybe at that moment, the sun shone just right though the grimy windows, but the woman, the shelves, the jars, everything in the room appeared in tones of gold and sepia, except for the painting behind the counter. From behind the shopkeeper's head, a fluorescent Mary and Jesus glared at me, their cartoon-like faces reproaching me for being there. ~ Sara Stark
Literary Fiction quotes by Sara Stark
Every damn one of us has faults. I feel like I was dealt an especially crummy hand."

"It got ugly. I became a man possessed by inner demons that could not be caged. I was desperate for answers that were never forthcoming. Jen avoided me like the plague. She was ever fearful of the questions that I refused to voice. All of my answers poured forth deliciously from the bottle. ~ Virginia Aird
Literary Fiction quotes by Virginia Aird
To Jana's mind everybody seemed happy to see BAbichka and resisted returning her, like a misplaced package sent to the wrong address. It was as if the recipient opened it up, knowing it should be returned, but wondering who long they could legitimately keep it before being changed with theft. ~ F.C. Malby
Literary Fiction quotes by F.C. Malby
I was an utterance in absentia. I was a forgotten word, uttered and mislaid long ago. I was the word that existed because there was another word that was my opposite, and without it I was nothing. I gained meaning only by acknowledging that possible other.
Nida ~ Faiqa Mansab
Literary Fiction quotes by Faiqa Mansab
In any case how many took the oath and are now licking the toes of the whiteman?No, you take an oath to confirm a choice already made. The decision to lay or not lay your life for the people lies in the heart. The oath is the water sprinkled on a man's head at baptism ~ Ngugi Wa Thiongo
Literary Fiction quotes by Ngugi Wa Thiongo
It seems to me that one of the things that happened with a lot of literary fiction in the 1980s and 1990s was that it became very concerned with the academy and less with how people live their lives. We got to a point where the crime novel stepped into the breach. It was also a time when the crime novel stopped being so metropolitan. ~ Val McDermid
Literary Fiction quotes by Val McDermid
Dare I ask Mao and his Communist Party?
I fear my throat will be cut into two pieces.
In the name of revolution, for thought crimes,
Such questions can turn me to ashes. ~ Zoe S. Roy
Literary Fiction quotes by Zoe S. Roy
Gracie leaned out the back, craning her neck as far as she could around the side, trying to catch the wind in her nose and flapping lips. She loved driving, and this car was much faster than the truck which hauled her cage. It was very green here, and the sun flashed and flickered behind the tall trees. There were a million smells along this road, both old and just born. She closed her eyes and huffed, pretending she was flying. ~ Cole Alpaugh
Literary Fiction quotes by Cole Alpaugh
He has had her today but he has not had her. No man ever shall. ~ Orna Ross
Literary Fiction quotes by Orna Ross
She opened her eyes and looked into his rather intensely.
"What?" Alex asked.
"This cannot be."
"What can't be?" Alex asked her, more bafflement in his voice this time.
"I have been reading people all my life. I can even read cats and dogs. I've been doing it all my life and i've been here longer than the two of you put together."
"And?" Alex wanted to get to the point. Whatever the truth may be, he just wanted to hear it, wanted it on the table before them so he could get this over with and they can go home.
"AND ... you are the first person that has nothing for me to see."
"And here I was hoping you'd say I'd win the lottery or get married to a supermodel or something." Alex said, starting to laugh.
"You don't understand. I don't see anything, anything at all. There is nothing to you, nothing but what I see before me."
"So ... what does that mean?"
"It means you don't exist. ~ J.C. Joranco
Literary Fiction quotes by J.C. Joranco
The lines in the corners of her eyes spoke of years of wisdom, as a tree with the number of rings increasing with each passing year. She was a small frame of a woman with piercing eyes that suggested that they knew you, understood you even. ~ F.C. Malby
Literary Fiction quotes by F.C. Malby
...the pleasures of literary fiction are the pleasures of orientation; the pleasures of literature are the pleasures of bewilderment. ~ Toby Litt
Literary Fiction quotes by Toby Litt
People often seem surprised that I choose to write science fiction and fantasy - I think they expect a history professor to write historical fiction, or literary fiction, associating academia with the kinds of novels that academic lit critics prefer. But I feel that speculative fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, is a lot more like the pre-modern literature I spend most of my time studying than most modern literature is. Ursula Le Guin has described speculative fiction authors as "realists of a larger reality" because we imagine other ways of being, alternatives to how people live now, different worlds, and raise questions about hope and change and possibilities that different worlds contain.

....

Writing for a more distant audience, authors tended to be speculative, using exotic perspectives, fantastic creatures, imaginary lands, allegories, prophecies, stories within stories, techniques which, like science fiction and fantasy, use alternatives rather than one reality in order to ask questions, not about the way things are, but about plural ways things have been and could be. Such works have an empathy across time, expecting and welcoming an audience as alien as the other worlds that they describe. When I read Voltaire responding to Francis Bacon, responding to Petrarch, responding to Boethius, responding to Seneca, responding to Plutarch, I want to respond to them too, to pass it on. So it makes sense to me to answer in the genre people ha ~ Ada Palmer
Literary Fiction quotes by Ada Palmer
It's amazing how close I have been, all this time, to my old life. And yet the distance that divides me from it is vast. ~ Lauren Oliver
Literary Fiction quotes by Lauren Oliver
I've read dozens of interviews and accounts that basically come down to How Poets Do It and the truth is they're all do-lally and they're all different. There's Gerard Manly Hopkins in his black Jesuit clothes lying face down on the ground to look at an individual bluebell, Robert Frost who never used a desk, was once caught short by a poem coming and wrote it on the sole of his shoe, T.S. Eliot in his I'm-not-a-Poet suit with his solid sensible available-for-poetry three hours a day, Ted Hughes folded into his tiny cubicle at the top of the stairs where there is no window, no sight or smell of earth or animal but the rain clatter on the roof bows him to the page, Pablo Neruda who grandly declared poetry should only ever be handwritten, and then added his own little bit of bonkers by saying: in green ink. Poets are their own nation. Most of them know. ~ Niall Williams
Literary Fiction quotes by Niall Williams
He wanted to say that he'd learned to read in gaol [jail], to really read. He wanted to tell her that the library had been his favorite place inside, that when he read 'As I Lay Dying' he'd found a voice that made sense of time and space as he was experiencing it in gaol, that it had spoken to him more clearly and more profoundly than any voice he'd ever encountered before: of how the past could not be separated from memory, of how it was not only time that changed people, but memory as well. ~ Christos Tsiolkas
Literary Fiction quotes by Christos Tsiolkas
Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period. ~ Khaled Hosseini
Literary Fiction quotes by Khaled Hosseini
If you want to be a good lair, tell people what they want to hear. (From Hot dogs under The Dakota) ~ Johannes Gouws
Literary Fiction quotes by Johannes Gouws
Can you imagine how many people got laid in here? Abby said, walking to the other side of the Jacuzzi. ~ J.C. Joranco
Literary Fiction quotes by J.C. Joranco
In matters of religion a skeptical mind is not a higher manifestation of virtue than is a believing heart, and analytical deconstruction in the field of, say, literary fiction can be just plain old-fashioned destruction when transferred to families yearning for faith at home. ~ Jeffrey R. Holland
Literary Fiction quotes by Jeffrey R. Holland
A nose is ordinarily naked. A nose isn't
nipple, although there are similarities. ~ Graham Spaid
Literary Fiction quotes by Graham Spaid
literary fiction is fiction that examines the character of the people involved in the story, and that popular fiction is driven by plot. Whereas popular fiction, I tell them, is meant primarily as a means of escape, one way or another, from this present life, a kind of book equivalent of comfort food, literary fiction confronts us with who we are and makes us look deeply at the human condition. ~ Bret Lott
Literary Fiction quotes by Bret Lott
In the white marble hall of the hotel, I'm waltzing with Rajat. The music is a river and we're dancing in it. It winds against our bodies, muscular as a serpent. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Literary Fiction quotes by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
The Booker thing was a catalyst for me in a bizarre way. It's perceived as an accolade to be published as a 'literary' writer, but, actually, it's pompous and it's fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself. I'd always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s, as substitutes for experience. ~ Neil Cross
Literary Fiction quotes by Neil Cross
What then, is time?" asks the saint. "If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not." Neither the past nor the future, argues Augustine, truly exists - and the present is merely an instant. "The present of things past is memory," he writes; "the present of things present is perception; and the present of things future is expectation." Augustine's conclusion - never fully stated, but unmistakably implied - is that time is subjective. It exists in the mind alone, and nowhere else. ~ John Wray
Literary Fiction quotes by John Wray
Literary fiction and poetry are real marginalized right now. There's a fallacy that some of my friends sometimes fall into, the ol' "The audience is stupid. The audience only wants to go this deep. Poor us, we're marginalized because of TV, the great hypnotic blah, blah." You can sit around and have these pity parties for yourself. Of course this is bullshit. If an art form is marginalized it's because it's not speaking to people. One possible reason is that the people it's speaking to have become too stupid to appreciate it. That seems a little easy to me. ~ David Foster Wallace
Literary Fiction quotes by David Foster Wallace
Influence is like the tide. Sometimes it goes, sometimes, however, it comes. ~ Constantina Maud
Literary Fiction quotes by Constantina Maud
Cyrus is the meat and potatoes of my life, but Prudence was a cupcake I could enjoy just for the sheer sweetness of being with her. ~ Bette Lee Crosby
Literary Fiction quotes by Bette Lee Crosby
This job is so...so...I can't even begin to describe it."

Try living it on a daily basis. ~ Virginia Aird
Literary Fiction quotes by Virginia Aird
Despite their macabre imaginations, they don't believe the things they say, all those things about magic and fantômes. But I do. I know he lingers. I've heard his voice, soft as a lover's whisper. ~ Sara Stark
Literary Fiction quotes by Sara  Stark
People who read literary fiction (as opposed to popular fiction or nonfiction) were better able to detect another person's emotions, and the theory proposed was that literary fiction engages the reader in a process of decoding the characters' thoughts and motives in a way that popular fiction and nonfiction, being less complex, do not. ~ Daniel J. Levitin
Literary Fiction quotes by Daniel J. Levitin
He searched his mind for something more to say, something to take away her pain, but he could find nothing. There were no words to ease such a pain. He knew because the ache in his heart was as great as hers. ~ Bette Lee Crosby
Literary Fiction quotes by Bette Lee Crosby
Join us. Play the game. It will bring you an untold number of rewards and you will finally have some direction and purpose in your lives. Take control of yourselves and those around you. Bend them to your will and all worldly pleasures will be yours ... ~ Martin Hopkins
Literary Fiction quotes by Martin Hopkins
There's something in your eyes that scares me,"
Max whispired, looking through the window.
Landon took her face into his hand and made her look into his eyes "What?" he asked. "What do you see?"
"Fear," she answered plainly. "I see fear ~ Shawn Kirsten Maravel
Literary Fiction quotes by Shawn Kirsten Maravel
The emotion was the most important thing. ~ Graham Spaid
Literary Fiction quotes by Graham Spaid
Thinking, like other drugs, can be a useful distraction from pain, as long as it's managed and doesn't become an addiction. ~ David Burr Gerrard
Literary Fiction quotes by David Burr Gerrard
In a way, for women, marriage was like an extended babysitting gig. The woman was committing herself to coddling and watching over a grown man for the rest of her life. ~ Bart Hopkins
Literary Fiction quotes by Bart Hopkins
Everybody should read fiction ... I don't think serious fiction is written for a few people. I think we live in a stupid culture that won't educate its people to read these things. It would be a much more interesting place if it would. And it's not just that mechanics and plumbers don't read literary fiction, it's that doctors and lawyers don't read literary fiction. It has nothing to do with class, it has to do with an anti-intellectual culture that doesn't trust art. ~ Percival Everett
Literary Fiction quotes by Percival Everett
Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses. Is there any other period in your life when you hate your best friend on Monday and love them again on Tuesday? But at eight, 10, 12, you don't realise you're going to die. There is always the possibility of escape. There is always somewhere else and far away, a fact I had never really appreciated until I read Gitta Sereny's profoundly unsettling Cries Unheard about child-killer Mary Bell.
At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realise that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We begin to picture a time when there will no longer be somewhere else and far away. We have jobs, children, partners, debts, responsibilities. And if many of these things enrich our lives immeasurably, those shrinking limits are something we all have to come to terms with.
This, I think, is the part of us to which literary fiction speaks. ~ Mark Haddon
Literary Fiction quotes by Mark Haddon
The air was cool and soft. The desert looked empty from our great height, enough to believe the geographers and travel writers who tell of the terrible desert life, the stillness, harshness, and death. I lay against the cold sand, tiny grains dancing fast and furious across my skin. I saw insects and scorpions, the line of a snake. Mohammed said the dunes moved millimeters a day. They inched across the desert floor toward the ocean. I smiled. The geographers were blind. ~ C. Lynn Murphy
Literary Fiction quotes by C. Lynn Murphy
Good writing is good writing. In many ways, it's the audience and their expectations that define a genre. A reader of literary fiction expects the writing to illuminate the human condition, some aspect of our world and our role in it. A reader of genre fiction likes that, too, as long as it doesn't get in the way of the story. ~ Rosemary Clement-Moore
Literary Fiction quotes by Rosemary Clement-Moore
That's what scares me the most, Paul. That I'll just pass through life and all the people I know will just disappear, without a trace, without me ever telling them how much they mean to me, no matter how small the time spent was or how great the friendship was. That they'll be gone and they'll forget me and I'll end up with nothing."
I saw in my head Charley laughing, Charley sticking his head out the window and screaming, Charley playing a video game so intensely he was a foot from the screen. Moments flashed before my eyes in a quick, unrelenting sequence.
I shook my head. "I know. Believe me, I know. ~ J.C. Joranco
Literary Fiction quotes by J.C. Joranco
... he'd assumed their relationship would go on forever. It was going on now, but in another way, like the rearrangement of the stars, which were all still in the sky, just burning in unexpected places. ~ Graham Spaid
Literary Fiction quotes by Graham Spaid
We who have seen the truth will reshape the world, and Ireland shall be our entrance to this world beyond words. ~ Orna Ross
Literary Fiction quotes by Orna Ross
His hands were magnets - shifting polarities - drawn and repelled to the unknown parts of another man's body. ~ Cory Ingram
Literary Fiction quotes by Cory Ingram
it strikes me that the writers most deeply concerned with the state of literary fiction and its biases against women could do a lot worse than trying to coin some terms of their own: to name the archetypes they wish to invert or criticise and thereby open up the discussion. If authors can be thought of as magicians in any sense, then the root of our power has always rested with words: choosing them, arranging them and – most powerfully – inventing them. Sexism won't go away overnight, and nor will literary bias. But until then, if we're determined to invest ourselves in bringing about those changes, it only makes sense to arm ourselves with a language that we, and not our enemies, have chosen.

May 14, 2011 Blog post ~ Foz Meadows
Literary Fiction quotes by Foz Meadows
The others moved in like a wake of vultures, ready to devour their prey. she had seen it on television once. 'Scavengers,' Tatinek called them. They swoop in and feed off the carcasses of animals that are too weak to escape - lots of them on battlefields. This looked the same, only the victim wasn't there, just his writing, his typewriter, and bits of dark paper. ~ F.C. Malby
Literary Fiction quotes by F.C. Malby
Action fiction is driven more by what than by who. Put that ticking nuclear suitcase under Manhattan, and it's relatively easy to create suspense. Literary fiction is driven more by who than by what. ~ Barry Eisler
Literary Fiction quotes by Barry Eisler
Taking a deep breath, I head back to Gatsby's to find Joy. ~ Andrew J. Keir
Literary Fiction quotes by Andrew J. Keir
She kissed him first, and all the rest followed. ~ Alice Hoffman
Literary Fiction quotes by Alice Hoffman
The things white men failed to notice would fill the world they had ruined ten thousand times over. ~ David Burr Gerrard
Literary Fiction quotes by David Burr Gerrard
The others forgot the work and the weather watching them throw. It was art. A thousand dollars a throw in Madison Square Garden wouldn't have gotten any more breathless suspense. It would have just been more people holding in. ~ Zora Neale Hurston
Literary Fiction quotes by Zora Neale Hurston
Beautiful day out there," I said, perching on the stool and crossing my legs. "It's autumn, Sunday, great weather, and crowded everywhere you go. Relaxing indoors like this is the best thing you can do on such a nice day. It's exhausting to get into those crowds. And the air is bad. I mostly do laundry on Sundays - wash the stuff in the morning, hang it out on the roof of my dorm, take it in before the sun goes down, do a good job of ironing it. I don't mind ironing at all. There's a special satisfaction in making wrinkled things smooth. And I'm pretty good at it, too. Of course, I was lousy at it at first. I put creases in everything. After a month of practice, though, I knew what I was doing. So Sunday is my day for laundry and ironing. I couldn't do it today, of course. Too bad: wasted a perfect laundry day. ~ Haruki Murakami
Literary Fiction quotes by Haruki Murakami
It's literature. It's all books. There are good books and bad books. Literary fiction can be bad, and so can sci-fi. Sci-fi can be wonderful and so can literary fiction. As long as it's a good book, who cares? Hold my attention; that's all I ask. Make me believe. ~ Margaret Atwood
Literary Fiction quotes by Margaret Atwood
A novelist must wrestle with all mysteries and strangeness of life itself, and anyone who dies not wish to accept that grand, bone-chilling commission should write book reviews, editorials, or health-insurance policies instead. ~ Pat Conroy
Literary Fiction quotes by Pat Conroy
Wouldn't the joys of life lose all colour, if life was eternal? ~ Constantina Maud
Literary Fiction quotes by Constantina Maud
When she was chair of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2010, Daisy Goodwin wrote a controversial essay lamenting the 'unrelenting grimness' of so many novels and pointing out that 'generally great fiction contains light and shade'
not only misery but joy and humor. 'It is time for publishers to stop treating literary fiction as the novelistic equivalent of cod-liver oil: if it's nasty it must be good for you. ~ Daisy Goodwin
Literary Fiction quotes by Daisy Goodwin
They would chase the image rising from death, expect it, but then enter an empty room with a shrine of deadened memorabilia that made them lose their minds. ~ Laura Gentile
Literary Fiction quotes by Laura   Gentile
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
Literary Fiction quotes by Debra Doyle
We're just like the antiques. We grow old and get scarred and beat up along the way, and the only question becomes whether we're going to make it until we realize what we already have is valuable." --Faith Bass Darling's Last Garage Sale ~ Lynda Rutledge
Literary Fiction quotes by Lynda Rutledge
If you write literary fiction that's set partly in the future, you're apparently a sci-fi writer ... I think of it as being more of a story about what remains after we lose everything and the importance of art in our lives. ~ Emily St. John Mandel
Literary Fiction quotes by Emily St. John Mandel
After all, she knows how painful it can be not to follow your heart and she knows about the obstacles and about loyalty and duty and about the countless kinds of love. If only Eve and Myles were freer to make the right choices, she thinks. ~ Claire Dyer
Literary Fiction quotes by Claire Dyer
When looked at from the woman's side of the bed-sheet, most tales take a turning. ~ Orna Ross
Literary Fiction quotes by Orna Ross
Many Scandinavian writers who had made their name in literary fiction felt they wanted to have a go at the crime novel to show they could compete with the best. If Salman Rushdie had been Norwegian, he would definitely have written at least one thriller. ~ Jo Nesbo
Literary Fiction quotes by Jo Nesbo
Can't stop what's coming. Ain't no waiting on you. That's vanity. ~ Cormac McCarthy
Literary Fiction quotes by Cormac McCarthy
All I want is to sleep
to dream. Life is better in dreams. ~ Christina Westover
Literary Fiction quotes by Christina Westover
He nodded, looking across the room at the sea of photographers and journalists. The microphones spread around him like birds waiting to be fed. ~ F.C. Malby
Literary Fiction quotes by F.C. Malby
The trees are bedecked with snow, the air is perfumed; how sweet, how dark the sultry fragrance. Forever hypnotising, always haunting. I want to inhale the fragrance of your skin, drink from your open mouth. ~ Suzy Davies
Literary Fiction quotes by Suzy  Davies
Ava glanced over at Napoleon, who was walking back toward them. She smirked at Juliet and said, "Sweetie, you are *not* the one. ~ Jay Fingers
Literary Fiction quotes by Jay Fingers
Me having a stalker is like Donald Trump having a sense of humility. It's not a match.
~From LIBERTY & MEANS ~ Kristin Dow
Literary Fiction quotes by Kristin Dow
Write for joy. It is the *only* reason to write. Whatever happens to your books afterward, just write for joy. Send your current one out when it's done and forget it, start another, and keep on writing for joy. Words I now live by. Welwyn Wilton Katz ~ Welwyn Wilton Katz
Literary Fiction quotes by Welwyn Wilton Katz
When life disappoints, one must apply one's will, not crumple. ~ Orna Ross
Literary Fiction quotes by Orna Ross
and here instead's another version of what was happening that morning, as if from a novel in which sophia is the kind of character she'd choose to be, prefer to be, a character in a much more classic sort of story, perfectly honed and comforting, about how sombre yet bright the major-symphony of winter is and how beautiful everything looks under a high frost, how every grassblade is enhanced and silvered into individual beauty by it, how even the dull tarmac of the roads, the paving under our feet, shines when the weather's been cold enough and how something at the heart of us, at the heart of all our cold and frozen states, melts when we encounter a time of peace on earth, goodwill to all men; a story in which there's no room for severed heads; a work in which sophia's perfectly honed minor-symphony modesty and narrative decorum complement the story she's in with the right kind of quiet wisdom-from-experience ageing-female status, making it a story that's thoughtful, dignified, conventional in structure thank god, the kind of quality literary fiction where the slow drift of snow across the landscape is merciful, has a perfect muffling decorum of its own, snow falling to whiten, soften, blur and prettify even further a landscape where there are no heads divided from bodies hanging around in the air or anywhere, either new ones, from new atrocities or murders or terrorisms, or old ones, left over from old historic atrocities and murders and terrorisms and bequeathed to the fut ~ Ali Smith
Literary Fiction quotes by Ali Smith
I'm very keenly aware that there aren't very many women writing literary fiction in Ireland and so that gives me a sense that what I say matters, in some small way. ~ Anne Enright
Literary Fiction quotes by Anne Enright
Cat Rambo: Where do you think the perennial debate between what is literary fiction and what is genre is sited?

Norman Spinrad: I think it's a load of crap. See my latest column in Asimov's, particularly re The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I detest the whole concept of genre. A piece of fiction is either a good story well told or it isn't. The supposed dichotomy between "literary fiction" and "popular fiction" is ridiculous. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Mailer, did not have serious literary intent? As writers of serious literary intent, they didn't want to be "popular," meaning sell a lot of books? They wanted to be unpopular and have terrible sales figures to prove they were "serious"?

I say this is bullshit and I say the hell with it. "Genre," if it means anything at all, is a restrictive commercial requirement. "Westerns" must be set in the Old West. "Mysteries" must have a detective solving a crime, usually murder. "Nurse Novels" must have a nurse. And so forth.

In the strictly literary sense, neither science fiction nor fantasy are "genres." They are anti-genres. They can be set anywhere and anywhen except in the mimetic here and now or a real historical period. They are the liberation of fiction from the constraints of "genre" in an absolute literary sense. ~ Norman Spinrad
Literary Fiction quotes by Norman Spinrad
It's never really easy to be successful as a writer when you're trying to write literary fiction. You've already limited your readership limited by that choice. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Literary Fiction quotes by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
In American fiction, belief is like that. Belief as upbringing, belief as social fact, belief as a species of American weirdness: our literary fiction has all of these things. All that is missing is the believer. ~ Paul Elie
Literary Fiction quotes by Paul Elie
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
Literary Fiction quotes by Tawni O'Dell
The headlights of parked cars shone through the rain, and the sidewalks extended, empty, into the darkness. Underground, the sewers surged like rivers, and a few blocks away, sirens blared. He was no longer aware of his heart or thoughts, only the image of a sunken face staring up from a well, the paleness rising through the water like polished bone. A ringed hand reached toward it, but as the fingers approached, the face would sink away, its eyes opening, closing, and the droplets of red falling like leaves. He was a child running through an autumn cemetery, leaping over cast iron fences, the rain bleeding into the tombstones and the roofs of the mausoleums, his legs following the wings of a crow, flapping to the north. A hedge of withered roses stood between him and his childhood house. He tripped and grazed his cheek on a manhole, his red blooming in the water. The sun set behind the hill; the house turned black - abandoned and derelict - and Chris knew he had to keep running, ahead, into the unknown. ~ Cory Ingram
Literary Fiction quotes by Cory Ingram
Never mind that she's been hearing this soliloquy from strangers since she was born, in the Year of the Fire Horse, twin sixes after the nineteen. Never mind the order of questions invariably changes even if the questions themselves do not: 'How long have y'all lived here? Do you even speak English? Oh, well. Your English is so good. Bless your heart, you must miss your people. You stick out like a raisin in a big bowl of oatmeal. Is it true that you worship cows? . . . Have you even heard of the Bible? Don't get all uppity on me, don't turn away. I know you think you don't have to listen. But this is my country. You do. When are y'all heading back? Y'all best be getting back to where you came from, you hear? No need to overstay your welcome. ~ Devi S. Laskar
Literary Fiction quotes by Devi S. Laskar
Darkness crept through. Shadows pried at doors, teased dull edges of recollections that never quite took hold. Memories that would have shriveled under the blinding sun of daylight. And reason. ~ Edward Fahey
Literary Fiction quotes by Edward Fahey
When one is busy, as she was in Donegal, life whistles by. One struggles to keep up with oneself. It is vital, when one slows down, to be conscious of small things, small moments. To take pains. ~ Orna Ross
Literary Fiction quotes by Orna Ross
One likes to think that there is some fantastic limbo for the children of imagination, some strange, impossible place where the beaux of Fielding may still make love to the belles of Richardson, where Scott's heroes still may strut, Dickens's delightful Cockneys still raise a laugh, and Thackeray's worldlings continue to carry on their reprehensible careers. Perhaps in some humble corner of such a Valhalla, Sherlock and his Watson may for a time find a place, while some more astute sleuth with some even less astute comrade may fill the stage which they have vacated. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle
Literary Fiction quotes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Apparently, faith in life is one thing and faith in literature is another. ~ Gerald Weaver
Literary Fiction quotes by Gerald Weaver
Authors of so-called 'literary' fiction insist that action, like plot, is vulgar and unworthy of a true artist. Don't pay any attention to misguided advice of that sort. If you do, you will very likely starve trying to live on your writing income. Besides, the only writers who survive the ages are those who understand the need for action in a novel. ~ Dean Koontz
Literary Fiction quotes by Dean Koontz
Write from Beyond what you know. From the authority of your senses. -author of Meditations in Green ~ Steven Wright
Literary Fiction quotes by Steven Wright
Where there's life, there's learning, and the truth is always calling us out of our pride. If we don't harken, it will call louder, and throw a situation at us. A pebble at first. If we still don't listen, we'll get a stone. Then a rock. Then a great crashing boulder. We must learn, or die. ~ Orna Ross
Literary Fiction quotes by Orna Ross
9 November 1989. A day nobody would forget. She had heard rumours about the wall. ~ F.C. Malby
Literary Fiction quotes by F.C. Malby
Yes, the essence of every love is a child, and it makes no difference at all whether it has ever actually been conceived or born. In the algebra of love a child is the symbol of the magical sum of two beings. ~ Milan Kundera
Literary Fiction quotes by Milan Kundera
Nothing is 'wrong' with me, Dan. What's wrong with you? she said in the same eerily quiet voice, dark eyes fixated on Dan, as she breathed heavily. ~ Martin Hopkins
Literary Fiction quotes by Martin Hopkins
There exists an oasis where inspiration bursts forth like black gold from the fertile loam and every odd bellbird chirps a melody worth remembering. There's no bloody map or nautical chart that can deliver you there, but you know the instant you've arrived because you never ever want to depart. ~ Adam G. Tarsitano
Literary Fiction quotes by Adam G. Tarsitano
In ancient Ireland the soul had but to stretch out its arms to fill them with beauty. Now all manner of ugliness besets the world. ~ Orna Ross
Literary Fiction quotes by Orna Ross
When authors who write literary fiction begin to write screenplays, everybody assumes that's the end. Here's another who's never going to write well again. ~ Richard Russo
Literary Fiction quotes by Richard Russo
Some people will tell you that Toronto, in the summer, is the nothing more than a cesspool of pollution, garbage, and the smells of a hundred ethnicities competing for top spot in a race won historically by curry, garlic, and the occasional cauldron of boiled cabbage. Take a walk down College Street West, Gerrard Street East, or the Danforth, and you'll see; then, they add - these people, complaining - that the stench is so pervasive, so incorrigible, nor merely for lack of wind, but for the ninety-nine percent humidity, which, after a rainstorm, adds an eradicable bottom-note of sweaty Birkenstocks and the organic tang of decaying plant life. This much is true; there is, however, more to the story. Take a walk down the same streets and you'll find racks of the most stunning saris - red with navy brocade, silver, canary, vermillion and chocolate; marts with lahsun and adrak, pyaz and pudina; windows of gelato, zeppole, tiramisu; dusty smoke shops with patio-bistros; you'll find dove-white statuary of Olympian goddesses, mobs in blue jerseys, primed for the World Cup - and more, still, the compulsory banter of couples who even after forty years can turn foul words into the bawdiest, more unforgettable laughter (and those are just the details). Beyond them is the container, the big canvas brushed with parks and valleys and the interminable shore; a backdrop of ferries and islands, gulls and clouds - sparkles of a million wave-tips as the sun decides which colours to leave on it ~ Cory Ingram
Literary Fiction quotes by Cory Ingram
science fiction is literary fiction with the lid blown off ~ Robin Winter
Literary Fiction quotes by Robin Winter
You already know what the machine will write on your arm. That lie you've been telling yourself - you know what it is. That blind spot is not really a blind spot - you're choosing to look away. Perhaps more to the point, you already know whether you want to see it. You already know whether you're going to use the machine. So why are you still reading this? ~ David Burr Gerrard
Literary Fiction quotes by David Burr Gerrard
Sometimes, when we cannot attain the freedom we are fighting for, we free ourselves b carving a new path to freedom. ~ Christina Westover
Literary Fiction quotes by Christina Westover
As I grow ever closer to the end of my time, I look back at this life and tell you that the only thing I would wish to give up is the regret I've carried in my heart for all these years. At long last I have come to realize the things I once counted as regrets were indeed blessings that I was too blind to see. ~ Bette Lee Crosby
Literary Fiction quotes by Bette Lee Crosby
We lie on the blanket, our bare bodies basking in the sun like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Only our apples were bitten a long time ago, and we ate them too. ~ Henry Martin
Literary Fiction quotes by Henry Martin
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