On Fiction Quotes

I cannot help remembering a remark of De Casseres. It was over the wine in Mouquin's. Said he: The profoundest instinct in man is to war against the truth; that is, against the Real. He shuns facts from his infancy. His life is a perpetual evasion. Miracle, chimera and to-morrow keep him alive. He lives on fiction and myth. It is the Lie that makes him free. Animals alone are given the privilege of lifting the veil of Isis; men dare not. The animal, awake, has no fictional escape from the Real because he has no imagination. Man, awake, is compelled to seek a perpetual escape into Hope, Belief, Fable, Art, God, Socialism, Immortality, Alcohol, Love. From Medusa-Truth he makes an appeal to Maya-Lie ~ Jack London

A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth. ~ Diane Setterfield

Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Should he give free reign to his desires, the bibliomaniac can ruin his life along with the lives of his loved ones. He'll often take better care of his books than of his own health; he'll spend more on fiction than he does on food; he'll be more interested in his library than in his relationships, and, since few people are prepared to live in a place where every available surface is covered with piles of books, he'll often find himself alone, perhaps in the company of a neglected and malnourished cat. When he dies, all but forgotten, his body might fester for days before a curious neighbor grows concerned about the smell. ~ Mikita Brottman

That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth. ~ Tim O'Brien

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence. ~ Flannery O'Connor

He had always liked a good mess - God knows he had sure made a few. In typical form, he squared his shoulders, furrowed his brows and muttered, bring it on. ~ Shelley K. Wall

A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written. ~ Tim O'Brien

I love fictional characters ... they can't break your heart. ~ Julia Hall

The story you are about to read is a work of fiction. Nothing - and everything - about it is real. ~ Todd Strasser

There is no society that does not highly value fictional storytelling. Ever. ~ Orson Scott Card

Let's all try to be fearless, sometimes we wish for the most perfect of outcomes and we arrive at the most unforgettable. Life can be scary and leave us hiding, but when we come out of hiding, we may realize, that life was the one thing that we could always count on ... ~ Holly Hood

When we make our ideals based on fiction and expect the world to fit into the moulds of those ideals, we get frustrated because different people have different ideals. Every person chooses his ideal on the basis of what suits him the most. ~ Awdhesh Singh

All writers struggle at some point with the problem of balance between authority and involvement, seduction and revelation. Specifically, beginning writers wonder how much description to employ, and more advanced writers ask how much plot is too much or too little. And there is no better place to find answers than in the Victoria's Secret catalogue--or in any ad for lingerie--where the arts of seduction and revelation are so successfully practiced. After all, the secret of the effective lingerie ad is the secret of effective storytelling--to provide, moment by moment, the illusion of imminent expose, to give the viewer (read: reader) the uncanny sense that something fundamentally compelling is always just about to be revealed. Lingerie ads and storytelling balance the veiled and the unveiled, the seen and the unseen, the shown and the about-to-be-shown. In short, it is the art of the tease, the craft of selective 'coverage,' that, not just in lingerie but in storytelling, works to enthrall. ~ Julie Checkoway

Finally I do like best of all stories whose necessity is in the implied recognition that someplace out there there exists an urgency - a chaos - , an insanity, a misrule of some dire sort which can end life as we know it but for the fact that this very story is written, this order found, this style determined, the worst averted, and we are beneficiaries of that order by being readers. ~ Richard Ford

But it's the truth even if it didn't happen. ~ Ken Kesey

A well-thought-out story doesn't need to resemble real life. Life itself tries with all its might to resemble a well-crafted story. ~ Isaac Babel

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity. ~ G.K. Chesterton

You should never read just for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "hard books." Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god's sake, don't let me ever hear you say, "I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth." Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of "literature"? That means fiction, too, stupid. ~ John Waters

There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself. ~ Flannery O'Connor

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats. ~ Richard Bach

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

We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something. ~ Orson Scott Card

Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties
all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name's Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion
these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated. ~ David Foster Wallace

In fiction, beauty was run-of-the-mill. ~ Eileen Favorite

They weren't true stories; they were better than that. ~ Alice Hoffman

One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper. ~ Michael Cunningham

Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. ~ Herman Wouk

In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies. ~ Lauren Groff

If this goes on . . ." fiction takes an element of life today, something clear and obvious and normally something troubling, and asks what would happen if that thing, that one thing, became bigger, became all-pervasive, changed the way we thought and behaved. ~ Ray Bradbury

Every healthy person at some period must feed on fiction as well as fact; because fact is a thing which the world gives to him, whereas fiction is a thing which he gives to the world. ~ G.K. Chesterton

T.G.T.B.T: too good to be true. ~ Madonna

Why did men drink wine and women water? Why was one sex so prosperous and the other so poor? What effect has poverty on fiction? What conditions are necessary for the creation of works of art? ~ Virginia Woolf

Reading is an intelligent way of not having to think. ~ Walter Moers

She enjoyed this part, despite the out-and-out ban on fiction, but it was always a pleasure soaked in guilt. ~ Nikita Lalwani

If something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones. ~ Norton Juster

The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue ... ~ Bruno Bettelheim

My life was a beanstalk and I was Jack, and the foliage was shooting up and up, abundant, impressive, at such speed that I could barely cling on. ~ Jessie Burton

Fiction is the only way to redeem the formlessness of life ~ Martin Amis

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures. ~ Jessamyn West

It is untrue that fiction is nonutilitarian. The uses of fiction are synonymous with the uses of literature. They include refreshment, clarification of life, self-awareness, expansion of our range of experiences, and enlargement of our sense of understanding and discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty , and understanding. Like literature generally, fiction is a form of discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty, and understanding. If it is all these things, the question of whether it is a legitimate use of time should not even arise. ~ Leland Ryken

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

Fantasy is storytelling with the beguiling power to transform the impossible into the imaginable, and to reveal our own "real" world in a fresh and truth-bearing light. ~ Leonard S. Marcus

Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors
we hope
of your life come from reading fiction. ~ Orson Scott Card

But wishes are only granted in fairy tales. ~ Simone Elkeles

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

History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of another nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality. Furthermore, history and legend have the same goal; to depict eternal man beneath momentary man. ~ Victor Hugo

There were no absolutes in fiction, no certain way to deliver what was needed. So it was no surprise most technical writers considered novel-writing a gateway to madness. ~ S.A. Reid

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness - the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction. ~ Orson Scott Card

There's always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is consciously inserted. Partly because it won't reflect the storyteller's true beliefs, it will only reflect what he BELIEVES he believes, or what he thinks he should believe or what he's been persuaded of.
But when you write without deliberately expressing moral teachings, the morals that show up are the ones you actually live by. The beliefs that you don't even think to question, that you don't even notice
those will show up. And that tells much more truth about what you believe than your deliberate moral machinations. ~ Orson Scott Card

All stories are true. But some of them never happened. ~ James A. Owen

Mr. Codro's destiny is Ptolemaic; in other words, based on fiction. Ptolemaic says it all; it means above all fixed and unchanging, that is to say different from real life which is by nature changing and temporary. It means: not according to natural truth, but according to man's desire and the pretense inspired by his fear of dying and his desire for permanence. ~ Alberto Savinio

I like writing for movies. It's nice to be alone working on fiction in your room, and then it's nice to be in a room with a bunch of people working on a movie. ~ Daniel Handler

Fiction wouldn't be much fun without its fair share of scoundrels, and they have to live somewhere. ~ Jasper Fforde

Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it. ~ Douglas Adams

Just as pilots gain practice with flight simulators, people might acquire social experience by reading fiction. ~ Raymond A. Mar

There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth. ~ Doris Lessing

The writing of solid, instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough. There is no trouble in writing a scientific treatise on the folk-lore of Central China, or a statistical enquiry into the declining population of Prince Edward Island. But to write something out of one's own mind, worth reading for its own sake, is an arduous contrivance only to be achieved in fortunate moments, few and far in between. Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica. ~ Stephen Leacock

There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong. ~ Neil Gaiman

Bear with me G-Harrison because this is going to be a long speech. I've always had this feeling that the world is not enough and I won't be happy in life unless I hold hands with a girl who has a golden eye and a gold finger; I beat the living daylights out a guy called Dr No; I get a postcard from my friend who lives in Russia which reads 'From Russia with love'; I spend some time working for her majesty's secret service; I play the Thunderball Super Spud lottery; I meet a guy called Moonraker; I finally get a licence to kill, which I applied for months ago; I buy a house with a view to kill for and I get a pet octopus called Octopussy. If only I lived twice and tomorrow never died, maybe then I would get a chance to fulfil my dreams. ~ Michael Diack

You people do not have to live like this!" the man pleaded. "We are humans, made in the image of God. No machine has the right to order us around." The man reached inside his box, no bigger than a foot square, and took out a small black book. "Here is the truth. Read it!"
Before anyone could act, one of the Sentries aimed its red eye at the babbling man, and shot out a deadly energy ray. With a final shout of defiance, the man fell to the ground, dead. The contents of his container spilling out onto the spaceport's floor. Marcellus looked down at the items, so precious to the man: they were copies of The Koran and The Bible. ~ Donald Allen Kirch

Losing maturity in one's fiction for the sake of marvels and monsters can also mean losing propriety, and that's not always a bad thing. ~ Hal Duncan

I can be absolutely comfortable with an apocalyptic Jesus because he was simply wrong. As long as he's wrong I don't worry about him, and basically everyone else who was announcing in the year 2000 at midnight, the end of the world is coming, I expect them to be wrong. Now if they're right of course, I'll be very uncomfortable that night. But as long as everyone for 2000 years has been wrong about the apocalypse, I can be quite comfortable with it. It's space fiction. ~ John Dominic Crossan

Terrible drought, crops dead, sheep dying. Spring dried up. No water. The Hopi, and the Christian, maybe the Moslem, they pray for rain. The Navajo has the proper ceremony done to restore himself to harmony with the drought. You see what I mean. The system is designed to recognize what's beyond human power to change, and then to change the human's attitude to be content with the inevitable. - Tony Hillerman, Sacred Clowns, 1993 ~ Tony Hillerman

The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. ~ Frederik Pohl

Hate did not give way to heroism. ~ Evan Meekins

Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

To write your dreams of fantasy, is to create fantasy in another's dreams ~ Rob Shepherd

Your energy bothers me and your spirit has different shadows of negative ghosts that love misery. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

The great city seemed to weigh upon me, as though it were crushing me under its heap of brick and stone. Gray, drizzly skies, congested streets, the soot-belching boats and barges chugging up and down the Thames, the teeming mass of four millions hastening about the countless activities of daily life in a metropolis, things adventurous, meaningful, spiritual, quotidian, futile, criminal, meaningless and absurd. Amidst this seething stew of humanity, I painted. ~ Gary Inbinder

Pride was the belt you used to hold your pants up when you had no pants. ~ Stephen King

The sight of her made him understand why he'd lost his faith in God. ~ Sarah Langan

If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that. ~ Yann Martel

No matter what decade science fiction comes from, it's representing the present. ~ Don Hertzfeldt

There was no way Penny would go to House and let Sam see her. That would ruin everything. Sam would take one look at her and be like, "Yikes, never mind. ~ Mary H.K. Choi

What got my interested in science fiction was actually the American space program. ~ Ronald D. Moore

In real life, I'd say that your commitment-phobe/narcissist/bad boy boyfriend is a lost cause, but romance is shelved in fiction for a reason. ~ Sarah MacLean

I never read to kill time. Killing time is like killing someone's wife or a child. There is nothing more precious for me than time. ~ Stanislaw Lem

Still, even when false, legends can be most informative. ~ Timothy Zahn

Successful fiction does not need to be validated by 'real life'; I cringe whenever a writer is asked how much of a novel is 'real'. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Everyone has a bizarre childhood and unusual life experiences, whether they know it or not. There's no such thing as a normal childhood. What's useful in writing weird fiction is learning how to understand and articulate those moments of personal, particular strangeness. ~ Kelly Link

When sober, which he hadn't been for well over a week, Burt thought about Double B, and what it might be like to be a real father, to wake up with him in the morning, to watch him grow, to get to know the little soul."
Book 2 "Having it ~ Jamie Scallion

The fact, and the intuition or logic about the fact, are severe coordinates in fiction. In the short story they must cross with hair-line precision. ~ Louise Bogan

You are dead weight. You are always trying to bring me down to your miserable state of mind. I am not going down that path - You are going to travel down that road alone. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

Inhumanity is part of humanity as much as suffering is a part of stories. Cruelty is written in the human script. ~ Johnny Rich

Ed, once called Aladdin, is the first artificial intelligence I've ever known. Maybe if Harry can kill Hiskott and if then I live long enough to see the world become the total science-fiction theme park it seems to be headed toward, I'll probably know dozens of them one day. Let me tell you, if they're all as nice as Ed has turned out to be, that's okay with me. ~ Dean Koontz

The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion. ~ Samuel Johnson

In terms of going back and forth between fiction and nonfiction - in which I'll include memoir, biography, and true crime - is that one relieves the other. ~ Kathryn Harrison

I am a sleeper, a spy, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds. I am not a misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, though some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen