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

“The short story is at an advantage over the novel, and can claim its nearer kinship to poetry, because it must be more concentrated, can be more visionary, and is not weighed down (as the novel is bound to be) by facts, explanation, or analysis. I do not mean to say that the short story is by any means exempt from the laws of narrative: it must observe them, but on its own terms.”

MeanFactsStoriesLawTermFictionNovelAdvantageClaimsBoundsNarrativeAnalysisExplanationPoetry IsShort StoryVisionariesKinship
Book:Stories
Create image

“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige throughbeing mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”

DoeRealStoriesFictionNovelNegativeCriticismCalmFakeWorking ItShort StoryGood WorkMistakenCalamityPrestigeLiterary Criticism
Book:The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews
Create image

“I first read Wendell Berry's short-story collections, "Fidelity" and then "Watch with Me." They just knocked my socks off. The characters and the fellowship of the small town reminded me of my own small town in Illinois.Then I discovered that, much like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, that all of Berry's fiction was centered in this same town.”

FirstsCharacterStoriesMy OwnFictionWatchesTownsCollectionsShort StorySmall TownFellowshipFidelitySockBerriesIllinois
Author:Nick Offerman
Create image

“The literature now is so opaque to the average person that you couldn't take a science-fiction short story that's published now and turn it into a movie. There'd be way too much ground work you'd have to lay. It's OK to have detail and density, but if you rely on being a lifelong science-fiction fan to understand what the story is about, then it's not going to translate to a broader audience.”

IfsWayPersonsStoriesTurnsLiteratureFictionAudienceToo MuchFansScience FictionLaysAverageDetailsRelyShort StoryTranslateLifelongAverage PersonDensityOpaque
Author:James Cameron
Create image

“If you want to be a fiction writer, you need to start reading like a fiction writer. To do so, you need to learn about craft so that the next time you pick up a contemporary short story, you're reading it not as an abstraction floating in formaldehyde, existing simply for the theorist's dull scalpel to saw on, but as a concrete thing constructed out of words and shaped by syntax, brought to life by a writer who made several thousand choices, some large, some small, before letting that imperfect beauty, the story, walk on its own two feet.”

IfsWantNeedsWritingMadeTwoStoriesChoicesReadingNextWalksFictionSawsFeetThousandPicksContemporaryCraftsDullShort StoryImperfectConcreteNext TimeFloatingAbstractionFiction WritersTheoristsSyntaxScalpels
Author:John McNally
Create image

“Who reads short stories? one is asked, and I like to think that they are read by men and women in the dentist's office, waiting to be called to the chair; they are read on transcontinental plane trips instead of watching banal and vulgar films spin out the time between our coasts; they are read by discerning and well-informed men and women who seem to feel that narrative fiction can contribute to our understanding of one another and the sometimes bewildering world around us.”

ThinkingMenWorldFeelsWellsSometimesStoriesSeemsFilmWaitingUnderstandingFictionOfficeMen And WomenNarrativePlanesChairsShort StoryCoastVulgarDentistDiscerning
Book:John Cheever: Collected Stories and Other Writings
Create image

“I used to write my own versions of famous tales, such as William Tell or Robin Hood, and illustrate them myself, too. When I entered my teens, I got more into horror and science fiction and wrote a lot of short stories. A literary education complicated things and for many years I wrote nothing but poetry. Then I got back to story-telling.”

WritingYearsStoriesUsedMy OwnFictionHorrorScience FictionComplicatedTalesVersionsShort StoryTeensHoodRobinsRobin HoodComplicated Things
Author:Peter Robinson
Create image

“The resistance to my work, and to my way of writing, has been there from the beginning. The first things I wrote were these short short stories collected in At the Bottom of the River, and at least three of them are one sentence long. They were printed in The New Yorker, over the objections of many of the editors in the fiction department.”

WayWritingFirstsLongHas BeensStoriesThreeFictionRiversBottomSentencesResistanceMy WayDepartmentEditorsShort StoryPrintedNew YorkersObjectionsOne Sentence
Author:Jamaica Kincaid
Create image

“The short story that eventually grew into Constellation was the first fiction set in Russia that I'd ever written, and that was right around the time I was giving up on a doomed, never-to-be-seen first novel. While I saw it could be something bigger, in hindsight fortuitous timing was as responsible as anything.”

GivingFirstsStoriesFictionNovelSawsWrittenGrewGiving UpBiggerResponsibleRussiaShort StoryTimingDoomedConstellationsHindsightFortuitous
Author:Anthony Marra
Create image

“A lot of people who want to see the short story have a renaissance of readership - they tend to think of short stories, and sometimes poems too, as being well-suited to the way we now live, with all of these broken-up bits of time. I hope they're right, but my sense is that our fiction reading has become, if anything, more cherished as a kind of escape from fragmentation.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWayWantWellsKindSometimesStoriesReadingBitsFictionBrokenShort StoryRenaissanceBroken UpReadershipFragmentation
Author:Lorin Stein
Create image

“Considering that "literary fiction" is a sub-genre that's not quite the same as "literature," either, it follows that the short, semi-humorous bits posted online for all to see are something absolutely other, uniquely themselves compared to canonical short stories, for example, and so it'd probably be best to call it something other than "online lit" since I honestly think very little of it can compare to so-called "literature."”

ThinkingLittlesStoriesLiteratureBitsFictionExampleHumorousHonestlyCompareGenreOnlineShort StoryConsideringLit
Author:Lee Klein
Create image