Fiction Quotes

Conflict and character are the heart of good fiction, and good mystery has both of those in spades.

But just then, for that fraction of time, it seems as though all things are possible. You can look a...

I feel ill," [Howl] announced. "I'm going to bed, where I may die.

Annoyed?” said Sophie. “Why should I be annoyed? Someone only filled the castle with rotten aspic, a...

Before long, everyone was giving him answers, and feeling a little superior, because it was really r...

Once out of the mailroom, I began to learn more about fear. As soonas fear begins to ascend, anatomi...

Yes, the saint was underrated quite a bit, then, mostly by people who didn’t like things that were i...

There was a certain amount of initial argumentation about the "meaning" of the balloon; this subside...

Richard Papen: As it happened, I knew Gartrell. He was a bad painter and a vicious gossip, with a vo...

What do you think about America?""Everyone always smiles so big! Well—most people. Maybe not so much...

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

A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men whe...

I am occasionally desired by congenital imbeciles and the editors of magazines to say something abou...

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

Lovers of print are simply confusing the plate for the food.

The lights were off so that his heads could avoid looking at each other because neither of them was ...

The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the Q letter in...

To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he rea...

I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever an...

The Waves is an extraordinary achievement ... It is trembling on the edge. A little less - and it wo...

The novel is a formidable mass, and it is so amorphous - no mountain in it to climb, no Parnassus or...

How do I know what I think until I see what I say?

No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good lite...

Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into wh...

A play is fiction - and fiction is fact distilled into truth.

To treat fiction as if it were a religious or moral sermon is about as far from the actuality of lit...

They had created themselves together, and they always saw themselves, their youth, their love, their...

I thought you'd be interested in these things as a government man. Ain't you mixed up in the prices ...

There is absolutely everything in great fiction but a clear answer.

Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause...

Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the ...

My father did not bring it up, but of course I knew that he had another reason to worry about my dec...

Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us h...

Human life is fiction's only theme.

Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the in...

I am glad you are happy--but I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery either. Th...

No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

guilt to motherhood is like grapes to wine

[Referring to passage by Alice Munro] Finally, the passage contradicts a form of bad advice often gi...

It never occurs to one to think whether she is pretty or ugly. One just surrenders to her charm.

Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction is truer.

Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late becaus...

People say it's not what happens in your life that matters, it's what you think happened. But this q...

Tell me your Dreams and I'll write you a Fantasy. Tell me your Fantasies and I'll paint you a Dream ...

Writing a novel is agony.

Nothing exists except through human consciousness

Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold.

Yes - 90% of fantasy is crap. And so is 90% of science fiction and 90% of mystery fiction and 90% of...

They were in a long line, an endless line, and as they burst from the wood there was an instant, the...

Every blade of grass was carved from emerald, every drip of water turned to diamond.

The hard truths are the ones to hold tight. - Old Bear

You're only young once, but you can be immature forever

For a moment he came near to sharing their incredible belief—it would do no harm to mutter a prayer ...

But you do believe, don’t you," Rose implored him, "you think it’s true?" "Of course it’s true," the...

Perhaps we are all fictions, father, in the mind of God.

She was like a landscape you see from the train, and you want to stop just there.

Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with the fiction, playi...

For marriage has nothing in common with love. marriage makes for security; love makes only for suffe...

Character in decay is the theme of the great bulk of superior fiction.

We are all roamers of vast spaces and travelers in many ages.

While my chosen form of story-writing is obviously a special and perhaps a narrow one, it is none th...

Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction. Indeed, all that a wonder story c...

Remember, any lie you are told, even deliberately, is often a more significant fact than a truth tol...

Just as terror, even in its pre-total, merely tyrannical form ruins all relationships between men, s...

There was nowhere to go, but I turned to go and met Atticus's vest front. I buried my head in it and...

Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, ...

Next she turned the gun upward and thrust the muzzle into her mouth. Now it was aimed directly at he...

The new day is almost here, but the old one is still dragging its heavy skirts. Just as ocean water ...

Exactly. When is comes to anything halfway important, you just don't get it. It's amazing to me that...

It was a strange feeling, like touching a void.

Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts ...

It was as if - this something I thought of only later, of course - she was gently peeling back one l...

It was as if - this something I thought of only later, of course - she were gently peeling back one ...

There are some things in this world that can be done over, and some that can't. And time passing is ...

There are some things in this world that can be done over, and some that can't. And time passing is ...

It was as if-this is something I thought of only later, of course-she was gently peeling bcd one lay...

In the end, like so many beautiful promises in our lives, that dinner date never came to be.

Memory is like fiction: or else it's fiction that's like memory.

Memory is like fiction: or else it' fiction that's like memory.

I have often wondered, Sir, [. . .] to observe so few Instances of Charity among Mankind; for tho' t...

Try to be someone upon whom nothing is lost!

She’s the latest freshest fruit of our great American evolution. She’s the self-made girl!(…)Well, t...

What we often take to be the new is simply the old under some novel form.

Before he went away, he had heard all about the self-made girl, and there was something in the pictu...

Let us be vulgar and have some fun, let us invite the President.

Art lives upon discussion, upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt, upon the exchan...

She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of t...

Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted dow...

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

He thought, that all men, trickled away, changing constantly, until they finally dissolved, while th...

Granted, there is always much that is hidden, and we must not forget that the writing of history - h...

Riza: Without his Alchemy he's just...Jean: A little brat who swears a lotMaes: An arrogant pipsquea...

To want more was not just childish, but cowardly, and somehow constpatory too. Death was change; it ...

I craved a form of naive realism. I paid special attention, I craned my readerly neck whenever a Lon...

Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn t...

Marian was suddenly overcome by an appalling crippling panic. She was very frightened at the idea of...

As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots. And as I think a...

It was the love which the hunter has for living things, and which he can only express by aiming his ...

You do care. You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disappr...