Quotessence
Home / Topics / Fiction Quotes

Fiction Quotes

Browse 6707 quotes about Fiction.

Related topics

Science FictionWritingThinkingIfsPeopleStoriesWorldWayBookCharacterKnowsNovelFactsRealKindWantFiction WritersRealityReadingFantasyReaderLiteratureFirstsHumansWriting FictionFeelsTryingNon FictionYearsGenreShouldLyingMindBelieveFilmArtIdeasWellsFormNeedsNonfictionMenHas BeensDoeMeanLittlesSeemsTwoDifferentGivingLongMadeMayI CanImaginationHappensHistoricalHardLooksEndsSometimesNarrativeWrittenImportantInterestingScienceStrangerWholeFansUsePersonsTruth IsNovelistsShowsWantedFiction WritingStuffCertainDoneFeelingsStillsCrimeLanguageReasonWould BeChildrenPastProblemHorrorMysterySaidStranger Than FictionBigsEnoughMatterSubjectsHappenedHistorical FictionMightCoursesmore

Fiction Quotes

“What are the hallmarks of a competent writer of fiction? The first, it seems to me, is that he should be immensely interested in human beings, and have an eye sharp enough to see into them, and a hand clever enough to draw them as they are. The second is that he should be able to set them in imaginary situations which display the contents of their psyches effectively, and so carry his reader swiftly and pleasantly from point to point of what is called a good story.”

ShouldFirstsHumansEnoughStoriesHandsSeemsEyeAbleHuman BeingsFictionSituationReaderDrawsCleverDisplayImaginaryCompetentGood StoryHallmarkPsych
Author:H. L. Mencken
Create image

“The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. Most of the writing today which is called fiction contains such a poverty of language, such triteness, that it is a shrunken, diminished world we enter, poorer and more formless than the poorest cripple deprived of ears and eyes and tongue. The writer's responsibility is to increase, develop our senses, expand our vision, heighten our awareness and enrich our articulateness.”

WorldWritingEyeTodayLanguageFictionResponsibilityVisionPovertyRolesAwarenessEarsIncreaseTongueSensesDeprivedPoorestCripples
Author:Anais Nin
Create image

“There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.”

MenEyeLawValuesFictionEqualBenefitsHumorousConstantEvery ManOperationsPleasantPocketsSmallestFurniture
Book:The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby
Create image

“Novels are political not because writers carry party cards -- some do, I do not -- but because good fiction is about identifying with and understanding people who are not necessarily like us. By nature all good novels are political because identifying with the other is political. At the heart of the 'art of the novel' lies the human capacity to see the world through others' eyes. Compassion is the greatest strength of the novelist.”

PeopleWorldHumansHeartArtEyePoliticalLyingUnderstandingPartyFictionCompassionNovelCapacityCardsNovelistsIdentifyingHuman Capacity
Author:Orhan Pamuk
Create image

“What avails it that indulgent Heaven From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come, If we, ingenious to torment ourselves, Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own? Enjoy the present; nor which needless cares Of what may spring from blind misfortune's womb, Appal the surest hour that life bestows. Serence, and master of yourself, prepare For what may come; and leave the rest to Heaven.”

IfsMayEyeCareHeavenGrowsEnjoyHoursFictionMastersSpringBlindMortalsMisfortunesPaleWoeTormentWombHideousIngenious
Book:John Armstrong's The Art of Preserving Health: Eighteenth-century Sensibility in Practice
Create image

“the habit of generalizing from one particular, that mainstay of the cheap and obvious essayist, has rooted many fictions in the public eye. Nothing, for example can blot from my memory the profound, searching, and exhaustive analysis of a great nation which I learned in my small geography when I was a child, namely, 'The French are a gay and polite people fond of dancing and light wines.”

PeopleChildrenLightEyeNationsMemoriesFictionExampleParticularHabitGayWineDancingProfoundObviousAnalysisRootedPoliteGeographyGreat NationsPublic EyeEssayists
Author:Kate Douglas Wiggin
Create image

“The philosopher, who with calm suspicion examines the dreams and omens, the miracles and prodigies, of profane or even of ecclesiastical history, will probably conclude that, if the eyes of the spectators have sometimes been deceived by fraud, the understanding of the readers has much more frequently been insulted by fiction.”

IfsSometimesDreamEyeUnderstandingFictionHistoryReaderMiracleCalmPhilosopherFraudSuspicionDeceivedSpectatorsRoman EmpireInsultedProfaneOmenProdigies
Book:History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire V2: the History Focus
Create image

“The competition for the future of crime fiction is fierce, as it should be, but don't take your eyes off Craig McDonald. He's wily, talented and-rarest of the rare-a true original. He writes melancholy poetry that actually has melancholy poets wandering around, but don't turn your backs on them, either. I am always eager to see what he's going to do next.”

ShouldWritingEyeTurnsNextFictionCrimePoetOriginalsCompetitionWanderMelancholyFierceCrime FictionMcdonaldsWandering Around
Author:Laura Lippman
Create image

“You can lose a reader in a blink of an eye. If a person is an engineer or chemist or an anthropologist or whatever, you spoil the whole book for that person if there's obviously ignorance here. What's wrong with so much science fiction is that the science is so lousy that it isn't worth paying attention to.”

IfsPersonsBookWholeEyeLosesAttentionFictionIgnoranceReaderScience FictionPay AttentionEngineersSpoilBlinkChemistAnthropologistsBlink Of An Eye
Author:Robert Caro
Create image

“With non-fiction writing I feel like I'm confined and driven by what actually happened. That makes the "plot". So it's a process of getting all of my notes typed up, then scanning through the notes, trying to extract or find certain vignettes that seem like they might write well - that might have a potential for good energy, shape, etc. And then at some point I start stringing these together, keeping an eye on the word count.”

FeelsWritingTryingWellsSeemsMightEyeTogetherCertainEnergyProcessFictionHappenedShapesNotesDrivenEtcPlotConfinedNon FictionFiction WritingGood EnergyScanningVignettes
Author:George Saunders
Create image

“Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.... Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.... Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies.”

WorldDreamEyeLyingSleepFictionHeardThis WorldThirdsScience FictionNovelistsProphetPredictionsTelling Lies
Book:The Left Hand of Darkness
Create image

“I was reading Raymond Chandler very much with the feminist eye. In six of his seven novels, it's the woman who presents herself in a sexual way, who is the main bad person. And then you start reading more fiction, whether crime fiction or straight fiction, it's just bad girls trying to make good boys do bad things, going all the way back to Adam and Eve. The woman that thou gavest me made me do it, Adam says to God.”

WayTryingPersonsMadeEyeGirlReadingFictionBoysNovelCrimeSixSevenFeministBad ThingsAdamCrime FictionAdam And EveBad GirlGood BoyReading More
Author:Sara Paretsky
Create image

“I would ask the people who were generous toward my own work. After class one day a poetry professor said to me, "Hey, there's this guy Basho you would find interesting," and so I found Basho. A fiction teacher told me, "You ought to read Clarice Lispector if you're interested in that sort of in-between stuff," and then Lispector appeared. It's not magic. You just keep your eyes open.”

PeopleIfsSaidEyeGuyAsksFoundStuffMy OwnInterestingFictionClassTeacherMagicOughtOne DayHeyGenerousProfessorsThis Guy
Author:John D'Agata
Create image

“Very, very often in movie sex you see this fiction about unity. A union. That somehow these two thinking beings become one, and there's one action and they're sort of perfectly in sync, and the lighting's perfect, and they've got their eyes closed, and they're gone, you know? And then you cut to someone having a cigarette. And it's all so much Novocain. Meanwhile, those of us us watching it are going "I'm never going to tell anybody, but I never have sex like that".”

ThinkingKnowsTwoEyeActionSexPerfectFictionGoneCuttingUnionsUnityNow And ThenCigaretteLightingSync
Author:Tilda Swinton
Create image