Lp Fiction Quotes

Life is a physics problem. Bodies in motion. ~ Robin Wasserman

Alone for a few precious seconds, he drew in a deep breath. He stood on a ruined street in a ruined city. Destruction stretched for kilometers in every direction, all caused by a single man for whom vengeance had devolved into madness. ~ G.S. Jennsen

Until quite recently women's histories were largely overlooked but in the wake of feminism there has been increasing interest in retrieving them. ~ Alison Weir

Beware, Underlanders, time hangs by a thread.
The hunters are hunted, white water runs red.
The Gnawers will strike to extinguish the rest.
The hope of the hopeless resides in a quest.
An Overland warrior, a son of the sun,
May bring us back light, he may bring us back none.
But gather your neighbors and follow his call
Or rats will most surely devour us all.
Two over, two under, of royal descent,
Two flyers, two crawlers, two spinners assent.
One gnawer beside and one lost up ahead.
And eight will be left when we count up the dead.
The last who will die must decide where he stands.
The fate of the eight is contained in his hands.
So bid him take care, bid him look where he leaps,
As life may be death and death life again reaps. ~ Suzanne Collins

Oh my God, cheese burn! ~ Susan Bischoff

I could hardly get to sleep for dreaming of revenge. ~ Ralph Ellison

Yes, I've made a great deal of dough from my fiction, but I never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it ... I have written because it fulfilled me ... I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever. ~ Stephen King

I'm snobby about books that aren't crime fiction: if I start reading a literary novel and there's no mystery emerging in the first few pages, I'm like, 'Gah, this obviously isn't a proper book. Why would I want to carry on reading it?' ~ Sophie Hannah

That was another thing people used to be able to do, which they can't do anymore: enjoy in their heads events which hadn't happened yet and might never occur. My mother was good at that. Someday my father would stop writing science fiction, and write something a whole lot of people wanted to read instead. And we would get a new house in a beautiful city, and nice clothes, and so on. She used to make me wonder why God had ever gone to all the trouble of creating reality.
Quoth Mandarax:
Imagination is as good as many voyages - and how much cheaper!
- GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Pretty much all memory is fiction and heavily edited. ~ Iain Reid

I consider fiction a very high-class form of lying. I enjoy and admire it enormously, but I don't think I'm very good at it. ~ Diane Ackerman

How astonishingly intimate the business of fiction is, more intimate than anything that issues from the psychiatrist's couch or even the lovers' bed. You see the soul, pinned and wriggling on the wall. ~ Martin Amis

In terms of fiction, there are a number of writers who are thinking about the future of the environment whose work complements mine. Kim Stanley Robinson's novel 2312 is a great example, as is Tobias Buckell's novel Arctic Rising. ~ Annalee Newitz

And you chose Quintessa over the two million units?" Bridgebane asked. "Over the huge bonus you could have had?"
"Yeah." Shade cocked his head. "I guess I made a better choice than you did. ~ Amanda Bouchet

Yeye shifted in her seat as Roma stared down at her angrily. "There are inter-realm laws I must abide by, that the soul must abide by as well when it comes to an appointed manifestation. Whoever was in the world before can not go into the new world. That identity must be forsaken. It must - "
"Forsaken or forgotten?" Roma barked.
"Forsaken," Yeye answered. "Unless you're putting this soul into a blank state like that of a child, it can not be forgotten. It has to be forsaken. That's the rule or you get no soul."
"So you're telling me that this soul will remember but will never be able to be that person it was?" Roma asked.
"I'm telling you a new memory must be formed with absolutely no reference to the previous."
"What the freak is that?" Roma asked, visibly agitated. "You can form new memories while holding on to preexisting ones."
Yeye stood. "Yes Roma, you're right. But you can also form new memories while you are unable to access the previous ones."
"Such it would have a drive that belongs to it but would never be able to access or be forbidden to access it?" Roma asked.
Yeye's voice was low. "I'm afraid that's the way it is going to have to be."
Roma shook his head vehemently. "Exactly which way is that Yeye. Exactly which way is that in common terms?"
Yeye spoke in her most resolute tone yet. "You will never be able to know whether or not this soul is Mara."
Roma gained silence, breathing in and out rapidl ~ Dew Platt

The authentic human being is one of us who instinctively knows what he should not do, and, in addition, he will balk at doing it. He will refuse to do it, even if this brings down dread consequences to him and to those whom he loves. This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance. Their deeds may be small, and almost always unnoticed, unmarked by history. Their names are not remembered, nor did these authentic humans expect their names to be remembered. I see their authenticity in an odd way: not in their willingness to perform great heroic deeds but in their quiet refusals. In essence, they cannot be compelled to be what they are not. ~ Philip K. Dick

The reading eye must do the work to make them live, and so it did, again and again, never the same life twice, as the artist had intended. ~ A.S. Byatt

But love is this really powerful thing that everyone's got if they'd just learn how to accept it. I mean, come on. If it's something we all have to give, and if it's something we all want, doesn't that mean there's exactly enough to go around? ~ Philip Beard

I read fiction all the time. It's true that I don't like fantasy or science fiction. I like "realistic" novels, particularly those in which nothing much ever happens. ~ Gustavo Perez Firmat

When I began writing science fiction in the middle '60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months. ~ Vernor Vinge

Fear would have told the Wright brothers not to fly. Fear would have told Rosa Parks to change seats. Fear would have told Steve Jobs that people hate touchscreens. ~ Jon Acuff

The basis of English law is as simple as this: If you would know the future's shape, look to the past. ~ John Pipkin

One of my favourite things to do when I write is to bring a sense of wonder to a normal everyday setting... Yes, there are magical elements, but there are also very down-to-earth elements and often what shines through isn't the magic, but the lanterns that the characters light against the dark... If you substitute the words "fairy tale" or "myth" for "fantasy," the reason I use these elements in my own work is that they create resonances that illuminate solutions to the real world struggle without the need for an authorial voice to point them out. Magic never solves the problems–we have to do that on our own–but in fiction it allows the dialogue to have a much more organic approach than the talking heads one can encounter in fiction that doesn't utilize the same tools.

[from the interview Year's Best 2012: Charles de Lint on "A Tangle of Green Men"] ~ Charles De Lint

Because they are ignorant and their parents are ignorant. Because they don't know any better." Pastel Orphans ~ Gemma Liviero

I'd never seen him bare-chested. For the first time, he seemed vulnerable to me. His smooth, tight skin wrapped around the long muscles he'd developed over a lifetime of hard work.
He found a shallow spot and sat, settling me onto his lap, holding my back to his chest. I couldn't stop shaking and it had nothing to do with the water or with being half dressed in a cave with a boy.
"Nothing else matters," Henry said in my ear. "I'm here. Start at the beginning. ~ Laura Anderson Kurk

When I think about myself as a writer, for sure I am a science fiction writer. The tools of extrapolation, the tools of anticipating the future - those are science fictional questions. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

Basically it is your choice. No matter what spiritual path you have taken, no matter what experiences you have had, choice is still choice. Spiritual development doesn't happen automatically. It is choosing the eye of Tao that sees both the whole view of things from a distance and the core of reality from deep inside. ~ Ilchi Lee

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader's ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn't there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn't possible, & if it was the results wouldn't be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder's victim, & makes us very afraid. ~ M. John Harrison

Fact is just fiction with different storytellers ~ Abby Slovin

I heard from clear across the city, over the Hudson in the Jersey yards, one fierce whistle of a locomotive which took me to a train late at night hurling through the middle of the West, its iron shriek blighting the darkness. One hundred years before, some first trains had torn through the prairie and their warning had congealed the nerve. "Beware," said the sound. "Freeze in your route. Behind this machine comes a century of maniacs and a heat which looks to consume the earth." What a rustling those first animals must have known. ~ Norman Mailer

'Floating Worlds,' published in 1975 and the lone science fiction novel by acclaimed historical novelist Cecelia Holland, was unique in being completely devoid of the usual pulp influences present in much space opera up to that time. ~ Pamela Sargent