Unpublished Fiction Quotes

Not knowing is another form of torture. ~ Ale Meza-Santiago

Where CREATIVITY is ALWAYS under construction! ~ Fiction Factory Incorporated

All fiction relies on the real world in the sense that we all take in the world through our five senses and we accumulate details, consciously or subconsciously. This accumulation of detail can be drawn on when you write fiction. ~ Rohinton Mistry

You know what pulp is, Mr. Tallis? It's the flesh of a luscious fruit, mashed down into an incredible, half liquid richness. so saturated with flavor that it fills your whole body, not just your mouth. ~ Mike Carey

Fiction should always challenge what you believe in, and make you think hard about what it is to be a human being. ~ Joe Mynhardt

Statisticians report that television is watched over six hours a day in the average American household. I don't know any fiction writers who live in average American households. I suspect Louise Erdrich might. Actually I have never seen an average American household. Except on TV. ~ David Foster Wallace

The soul wants what it wants and the heart just has to live with it. ~ Angel M.B. Chadwick

The web is a dangerous place for a mind begging to slack off and be distracted by nonsense. ~ Michelle M. Pillow

We remember the best fiction as though experienced, and we finish the greatest works with access to the inner-lives of the mind in a way life refuses us. ~ M.J. Hyland

You have to have thick skin because people are like vultures, but what they fail to realize is that they are making you stronger. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say 'I read a science fiction novel that says it's not a problem.' You take action. ~ Al Gore

We stared at each other in silence until she looked away. I won. I always won, because I had my daddy's eyes and she could only stare for so long, without looking away. I had my own ways of getting to Baby-Sweet. ~ Jaguar Jonez

I mind-melded the details trapped inside my head since it felt easier than talking, which surprised me." -- Jennifer Mills from Soul Reader by: Dianne Bright ~ Dianne Bright

Antanas eased up on the accelerator and pulled the truck onto the shoulder. The sound of the soldiers' footsteps crunching in the snow made Maria sit up straight. The truck had driven about thirty metres past the patrol, but none of the soldiers had fired upon them. Antanas hoped fervently that the transport documents that Peter had furnished him would pass inspection. Maria reached down and touched a metal pipe concealed beneath her seat. She was prepared to use it.

Jadwyga continued to pray quietly. "Mother Mary, spare me, Maria, and the other women from rape, and Antanas from death."

As a sergeant approached the truck, Jadwyga's stomach cramped, sweat broke out on her forehead, and her arms began to shake. Then she fainted. Maria propped Jadwyga up to make it look as though she was sleeping, and then smiled at the sergeant who was rapping on the glass.

Antanas rolled down his window. ~ Mark Creedon

While the gun lobby sought to close the courthouse door to all legitimate claims, Zack and other clever lawyers often artfully dodge these efforts with carefully crafted pleadings and appropriate argument, successfully litigating their claims, and holding gun companies responsible. ~ Mark M. Bello

Apparently, love is the worst kind of madness. ~ Shea Ernshaw

Dr. Jules Hilbert: Hell Harold, you could just eat nothing but pancakes if you wanted.
Harold Crick: What is wrong with you? Hey, I don't want to eat nothing but pancakes, I want to live! I mean, who in their right mind in a choice between pancakes and living chooses pancakes?
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Harold, if you pause to think, you'd realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led ... and, of course, the quality of the pancakes. ~ Zach Helm

Make sure he's worth it. She had thought it so many times it had become a part of her. Like her tongue filling her mouth, so this tenet filled her being. ~ Colleen McCarty

If you would understand your own age, read the works of fiction produced in it. People in disguise speak freely. ~ Arthur Helps

Writing is writing to me. I'm incapable of saying no to any writing job, so I've done everything - historical fiction, myths, fairy tales, anything that anybody expresses any interest in me writing, I'll write. It's the same reason I used to read as a child: I like going somewhere else and being someone else. ~ Geraldine McCaughrean

Caches of data are being recovered all the time. Why, just the other day, I heard that we now had complete texts for all three of Shakespire's plays! ~ Dan Abnett

Novels, says Sartre, are not life, but they owe our power upon us, as upon himself as an infant, to the fact that they are somehow like life. In life, he once remarked, 'all ways are barred and nevertheless we must act. So we try to change the world; that is, to live as if the relations between things and their potentialities were governed not by deterministic processes but by magic.' The as if of the novel consists in a similar negation of determinism, the establishment of an accepted freedom by magic. We make up aventures, invent and ascribe the significance of temporal concords to those 'privileged moments' to which we alone award their prestige, make our own human clocks tick in a clockless world. And we take a man who is by definition de trop, and create a context in which he isn't.

The novel is a lie only as our quotidian inventions are lies. The power which goes to its making--the imagination --is a function of man's inescapable freedom. This freedom, in Mary Warnock's words, 'expresses itself in his ability to see things which are not.' It is by his fiction that we know he is free. It is not surprising that Sartre as ontologist, having to describe many kinds of fictive behaviour, invents stories to do so, thus moving into a middle ground between life and novel. .... ~ Frank Kermode

Reality Tv had become the preferred drug of choice for the George Clooney obsessed housewives strung out on empty promises and splintered dreams ~ Saira Viola

In fiction workshops, we tend to focus on matters of verisimilitude largely because such issues are so much easier to talk about than the failure of imagination. ~ Tim O'Brien

Sometimes, fact mixed with fiction so thoroughly that, though no lies were told, it was hard to remember what was strictly true. ~ Stephenie Meyer

Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all. ~ Neil Gaiman

Art is not subject to reason, it is intuitive. When you start creating what your powerful imagination tells you, when you surrender to your spiritual impulse and inspiration completely, without thinking beforehand about the end result of your creativity. It is then as if the emotional range of your sensitive mind has been crafted into the delicate spectrum of colors. A vision of black and white is now a marvel of mesmerizing stains. ~ Jazbia S.

Smiley himself was one of those solitaires who seem to have come into the world fully educated at the age of eighteen. Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession. The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colourful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley, has lived and worked for years among his country's enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation is his highest aim, he learns to love the crowds who pass him in the street without a glance; he clings to them for his anonimity and his safety. His fear makes him servile - he could embrace the shoppers who jostle him in their impatience, and force him from the pavement. He could adore the officials, the police, the bus conductors, for the terse indifference of their attitudes. (ch. 9) ~ John Le Carre

Grace runs downhill and now all his time is being redeemed. ~ Geoffrey Wood

Around eighth grade Margot started getting really sensitive about her weight, even though she wasn't remotely fat - just a little round-faced. So Margot did what any normal fourteen-year-old girl would do. She started puking on purpose, every day after fifth period. Of course now, she does more than puke. But we don't talk about that. Because real friends don't judge each other for what they do to survive in hell. ~ Isobel Irons

Never trust anything a fiction writer says about himself. ~ Stephen King

Fiction is supposed to be immersive and supposed to be entertaining and narrative, so structures have to be buried a little bit. If they come foregrounded too much, it stops being fiction and starts being poetry - something more concrete and out of time. ~ Eleanor Catton

If certain books are to be termed 'immigrant fiction,' what do we call the rest? Native fiction? Puritan fiction? This distinction doesn't agree with me. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

They do think the world is some kind of science-fiction novel, then. Do you realize how fervently most people will believe in the promises of technology, even when those promises fly in the face of common sense? ~ Dexter Palmer

For the Irish, life is a matter of perpetual grievance. We remember the Famine, but forget the Draft Riots. We seal off our neighborhoods to strangers, but allow our own priests to victimize our own children. We worship violence and we enslave ourselves to alcohol, we lie and steal and kill without conscience for generations at a time. But it's all right in the end, and do you know why? Because we don't tolerate lust. ~ Mary Gordon

If you want to write a novel about our world now, you'd better write science fiction, or you will be doing some kind of inadvertent nostalgia piece; you will lack depth, miss the point, and remain confused. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

In the meantime, I just have to create those realistic goals about the fact that I don't have a ton of options as an actor who's been on a science fiction show for 8 years. ~ Michael Shanks

There were men in their fifties, men who take a stab at fitness, men who try. They may not look young, but they still look viable. Lammers wasn't one of those. Lammers was one of those crack-in-the-ass guys ten months pregnant with a beer baby. ~ Lily Gardner

They would never forget the war. The world wouldn't let them, and neither would history. ~ Lee Strauss

'Kane and Abel' is the best popular fiction of all time. As a kid, I wanted to be prime minister when I read 'First Among Equals.' ~ Louise Mensch

You've a pretty good nerve," said Ratchett. "Will twenty thousand dollars tempt you?"
It will not."
If you're holding out for more, you won't get it. I know what a thing's worth to me."
I, also M. Ratchett."
What's wrong with my proposition?"
Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal - I do not like your face, M. Ratchett," he said. ~ Agatha Christie