Home / Topics / Fiction Quotes

Fiction Quotes

Browse 6707 quotes about Fiction.

Fiction Quotes

“Would-be novelists need to bring equal parts arrogance and ignorance to the task before them. The arrogance is almost self-explanatory. Walk into any bookstore or library, calculate how many lifetimes the average person would need to read all the fiction contained therein. To think that one has anything to contribute, to any genre or tradition, takes genuine hubris.”

Thinking Needs Writing Persons Self Would Be Walks Fiction Ignorance Equal Tradition Tasks Lifetime Library Average Genuine Genre Novelists Arrogance Bookstores Average Person Hubris

Author:Laura Lippman

“There's a tradition in American fiction that is deadly serious and earnest - like the Steinbeckian social novel.”

Social Fiction Novel Serious Tradition Earnest

Author:John Hodgman

“The "great tradition" does not brook even the possibility of libidinal gratification between the pages as an end in itself, and FR Leavis's "eat up your broccoli" approach to fiction emphasises this junkfood/wholefood dichotomy.”

Doe Ends Fiction Possibility Approach Pages Tradition Gratification Brooks Dichotomy Broccoli

Author:F. R. Leavis

“After all, that's why we read historical fiction-to be transported to another time, and to be astonished at ancient people's lives and traditions, just as they would probably be astonished at ours.”

People Fiction Tradition Historical Ancient Historical Fiction Another Time

Book:The Egyptian Royals Collection: Three Historical Novels by Michelle Moran: Nefertiti, The Heretic Queen, and Cleopatra's Daughter

Source: The Egyptian Royals Collection: Three Historical Novels by Michelle Moran: Nefertiti, The Heretic Queen, and Cleopatra's Daughter

“They recite their sacred books, although the fact informs me that these are a fiction from first to last. O Reason, thou (alone) speakest the truth. Then perish the fools who forged the (religious) traditions or interpreted them!”

Firsts Book Reason Facts Lasts Religious Fiction Fool Tradition Sacred Forged Religious Traditions

Author:Al-Maʿarri

“To value the tradition of, and the discipline required for, the craft of fiction seems today pointless. The real Arcadia is a lonely, mountainous plateau, overbouldered and strewn with the skulls of sheep slain for vellum and old bitten pinions that tried to be quills. It's forty rough miles by mule from Athens, a city where there's a fair, a movie house, cotton candy.”

“Southern writing is regional: it includes dialect, settings, and cultural traditions from that region. However the themes and story conflicts are universal. My challenge is to write regional fiction without falling into the trap of nostalgia. There are important issues facing the south that I believe should be raised in the stories to make them contemporary, believable, and relevant to today's readers.”

“It's once I discover the people inside that the story really gets going, and then the formal invention becomes less important. It's just the way in; it's the door; and then what's behind it is always some kind of people, which I think probably makes me more in the tradition of realistic fiction because that's usually what I'm interested in, the people.”

People Thinking Way Kind Important Stories Behinds Fiction Doors Tradition Invention Realistic Formal Realistic Fiction

Author:Jess Walter

“Incidentally, I am intrigued by how many European and Latin American writers expressed their political views in the columns they routinely wrote or write in the popular press, like Saramago, Vargas Llosa, and Eco. This strikes me as one way of avoiding opinionated fiction, and allowing your imagination a broader latitude. Similarly, fiction writers from places like India and Pakistan are commonly expected to provide primers to their country's histories and present-day conflicts. But we haven't had that tradition in Anglo-America.”