Best fiction & moral Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“I have long admired the visceral storytelling and moral complexity of John Vaillant’s brilliant non-fiction about humankind’s tragically ambivalent relationship with the natural world. Now he brings his abundant literary gifts to a debut novel set in a very real borderland in which human beings are themselves treated like animals. The Jaguar’s Children is a beautifully rendered lament for an imperiled culture and the brave lives that would preserve it. You should read it.”

“Fiction should be about moral dilemmas that are so bloody difficult that the author doesn't know the answer. What I hate in fiction is when the author knows better than the characters what they should do.”

Knows Should Character Hate Difficult Answers Fiction Moral I Hate Bloody Dilemma Moral Dilemma

Author:Pat Barker

“As readers, we are seldom interested in the fine sentiments of a lesson learnt; we seldom care about the good manners of morals. Repentance puts an end to conversation; forgiveness becomes the stuff of moralistic tracts. Revenge - bloodthirsty, justice-hungry revenge - is the very essence of romance, lying at the heart of much of the best fiction.”

Heart Ends Care Romance Lying Stuff Justice Fiction Moral Fine Reader Lessons Conversation Essence Revenge Hungry Manners Good Man Repentance Sentiments Good Manners

Author:Alberto Manguel

“The primary ambition of Nietzsche's critique of knowledge is ... to demonstrate that 'truths' are fictions masking moral commitments.”

Fiction Moral Ambition Commitment Primaries Critique

Book:Break-Out from the Crystal Palace: The Anarcho-Psychological Critique: Stirner, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace: The Anarcho-Psychological Critique: Stirner, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky

“God, or rather the fiction of God, is thus the sanction and the intellectual and moral cause of all the slavery on earth, and the liberty of men will not be complete, unless it will have completely annihilated the inauspicious fiction of a heavenly master.”

Men Earth Causes Fiction Liberty Moral Atheism Masters Intellectual Slavery Positive Atheism Heavenly Sanctions

Author:Mikhail Bakunin

“Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.”

Fiction Moral Wicked

Author:Anita Brookner

“History presents the pleasantest features of poetry and fiction,--the majesty of the epic, the moving accidents of the drama, the surprises and moral of the romance. Wallace is a ruder Hector; Robinson Crusoe is not stranger that Croesus; the Knights of Ashby never burnish the page of Scott with richer lights of lance and armor than the Carthaginians, winding down the Alps, cast upon Livy.”

Light Romance Moving Fiction Moral History Drama Pages Surprise Casts Stranger Accidents Features Epic Majesty Knights Armor Alps Hector Robinson Crusoe Winding Down

Book:Pleasures of Literature

Source: Pleasures of Literature

“In such a society as ours the only possible chance for change, for mobility, for political, economic, and moral flow lies in the tactics of guerrilla warfare, in the use of fictions, of language.”

Use Political Lying Language Chance Fiction Moral Economic Flow Warfare Tactics Mobility Guerrillas Guerrilla Warfare

Book:Bodies of Work: Essays

Source: Bodies of Work: Essays

“Visa for Avalon is a testament to the power of fiction. It illuminates the truth at the heart of what is commonly called reality. This account of lives transformed and ruined by the triumph of a totalitarian rule is a timely reminder of how moral and intellectual laziness and apathy can pave the road to the reign of terror brought on by such a system.”

Heart Reality Fiction Moral Intellectual Accounts Terror Triumph Apathy Transformed Laziness Reign Testament Ruined Reminders Visa Timely Avalon Reign Of Terror Intellectual Laziness

Author:Azar Nafisi

“A fiction which is designed to inculcate an object wholly alien to the imagination sins against the first law of art; and if a writer of fiction narrow his scope to particulars so positive as polemical controversy in matters ecclesiastical, political or moral, his work may or may not be an able treatise, but it must be a very poor novel.”

Ifs Firsts May Art Matter Able Law Political Imagination Sin Poor Fiction Moral Novel Objects Aliens Controversy Scope

Author:Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

“Fiction allows for moral questioning, but through the back door. Personally, I like books that make you think - books you're still wondering about three days after you finish them; books you hand to a friend and say "Read this, so we can talk about it."”

Thinking Stills Book Hands Three Fiction Wonder Moral Doors Questioning Make You Think Back Doors

Book:Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

“If you start looking at movies on a moral level - "I don't like that, that hurts, that's mean, that's bad" - then I don't even want to talk to you. Or like, someone that says "I don't like science-fiction movies," or "I don't want to sit through a Western," or "I don't like violence in movies," then I completely tune out.”

Ifs Want Mean Hurt Levels Fiction Moral Violence Science Fiction Western Tunes Science Fiction Movie Violence In Movies

Author:Bret Easton Ellis

“The goal, I suppose, any fiction writer has, no matter what your subject, is to hit the human heart and the tear ducts and the nape of the neck and to make a person feel something about the characters are going through and to experience the moral paradoxes and struggles of being human.”

Feels Humans Heart Persons Matter Character Goal Fiction Moral Struggle Subjects Tears No Matter What Necks Paradox Being Human Human Heart Fiction Writers

Author:Tim O'Brien

“A science fiction story is just an attempt to solve a problem that exists in the world, sometimes a moral problem, sometimes a physical or social or theological problem.”

World Sometimes Stories Problem Social Fiction Moral Science Fiction Solve Theological Fiction Stories

Book:Conversations with Ray Bradbury

Source: Conversations with Ray Bradbury

“Great fiction can often present moral messages with greater power and clarity than instructional writing - since literature, after all, penetrates not just the intellect, but the imagination.”

Writing Literature Imagination Fiction Moral Greater Messages Intellect Clarity Penetrate Greater Power

Author:Charles Colson

“If Fobbit leaves a reader feeling stranded in some bland in-between territory, then I haven't done my job. But having said all that, I didn't consciously write the book with a particular moral intent. I took what I experienced and processed it through the sausage factory of fiction. It's up to readers to interpret what's on the page - as is the case with any novel.”

Ifs Writing Said Book Done Feelings Jobs Fiction Moral Cases Novel Havens Particular Reader Pages Territory Factories Sausage Bland Stranded

Author:Dave Abrams

“It would be difficult for a writer of realism to avoid suggesting a political/moral perspective in his or her fiction. "Politics" per se is absent from my writing but there is usually a moral (if ironic) compass.”

Ifs Writing Would Be Political Difficult Fiction Moral Perspective Ironic Realism Compass Absent Suggesting

Author:Joyce Carol Oates

“I was thinking about the legacy of ghosts in fiction, and specifically the moral power of those Dickensian ghosts. Because a ghost can be a very powerful but also manipulative element.”

Thinking Powerful Fiction Moral Elements Ghost Legacy Very Powerful Manipulative

Author:George Saunders

“One thing that fiction does is it allows us to take big picture questions, big issues, big moral and socio-political changes and see how they play out on real people's lives, with real individuals.”

People Doe Real Play Bigs Political Individual Fiction Moral Issues One Thing Big Picture Political Change

Author:Ben H. Winters

Fiction Quotes

Related topics

Fiction Quotes