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Literary Fiction Quotes

Browse 431 quotes about Literary Fiction.

Literary Fiction Quotes

“Some numbers I want them to know: fifty, the age of the man they knocked over; fifteen, my age when I met him as a child bride; twenty-five, the number of years I had been his wife; fifty thousand, the amount we had gotten for our farmland to pay for my sick parents’ hospital bills; two, the count of bottles of rat poison we had bought to end our constant worries about work and money; one. the only time I had been pregnant, and he had gone from the happiest to the saddest man I had ever known. (The Waiting)”

IndiaLiterary FictionShort StoriesSouth Asian LiteratureSouth Asian Writer
Book:Each of Us Killers
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“This week’s issue of Publisher’s Weekly includes a full-page Q&A about TORN! The intro reads: “After calling Torn ‘ambitious’ and ‘vividly detailed’ and saying it ‘demonstrates that Snodgrass knows his patch of America like Faulkner knew Yoknapatawpha,’ it’s no wonder BookLife Reviews designated it an Editor’s Pick. We spoke with the author about his long-running series and its historical inspiration.” See the full Q&A on page 77 of the Sept. 15, 2025 issue!”

Historical FictionLiterary FictionAuthor Q ABooklifePublishers WeeklyRichard Snodgrass
Author:Richard Snodgrass
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“Back at the oak the men lounged in the shade and finished up their meal. Watching Clayt down at the creek, Nestor threw out a quiet question for anyone who would listen. “How come Clayt don’t wear no spurs?” “Don’t need ’em,” Lou said. “You seen him ride. He can purty much control a horse with just his knees and neck-reinin’.” Nestor lay back and propped on both elbows. Lifting a leg, he turned one boot in profile and spun the rowel with the toe of his other boot. “Hell, I like the way it sounds when I walk.” Lou stood and brushed off his trousers. “He don’t need that neither.”

Literary FictionConfidence QuotesWyomingCowboysRanchers
Book:Indigo Heaven
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“At first, she bucked like a wild stag beneath me, and she tried to scream, but the pillow did a good job of muffling her voice.  Before long, the bucking stopped, and my wife’s corpse, blue without oxygen, appeared below me like a hideous phantom.”

PoliticsFantasyHorrorScience FictionParanormalSci FiImaginativeLiterary FictionSlasher
Book:The Odd and The Strange: A Collection of Very Short Fiction
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“The orderly brandished a hunting knife from a sheath at his waist and sliced open the prisoner’s throat with it.  Warm blood cascaded out of the prisoner’s throat, some of it spraying the captain’s uniform.  The orderly waited for the prisoner to bleed to death before cutting the head clean off.  Within a few minutes, the muscle that the prisoner built on his body was carved out and thrown on the grill.  After the meat cooled, the orderly put the human steaks in front of the captain for dinner.  As the captain ate each buttery piece, he couldn’t help but compliment the orderly for a job well-done.”

PoliticsFantasyHorrorScience FictionParanormalSci FiImaginativeLiterary FictionSlasher
Book:The Odd and The Strange: A Collection of Very Short Fiction
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“But she couldn’t stop. The smell of her burning house still filled her nostrils even as the chilly breeze swept by her enticingly. The screams that rang out were deafening; flames shot up everywhere. The screams were prolonged and were she, a little child of ten, not so scared, they would have been very irritating for they were constant; they were horror filled, they spelt death and terror.”

LifeJourneyAdventureTravelSpyLiterary FictionWomen S FictionLife AdventureBildungsromanLromance
Book:Life Makes A Novel...A Novel
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“Today, each time I looked at the house, I could see danger seeping out the windows like smoke. As night fell, I concentrated on the mounds of purple, white, and pink flowers that clustered against the siding: sweet peas that came back this time of year no matter how neglected. The petals were confused; they grew every which way out of their long stalks and emerged as butterfly wings rather than flowers. Now in the looming blackness, I watered the hydrangeas with their tiny white buds-blooms that patiently waited for a petal to fall so another could take its place. It would take a hundred years to count all the buds on a hydrangea bush. They just never gave up.”

Nature QuotesLiterary FictionBeauty QuotesMagical RealismPerseverance QuotesFlower QuotesHydrangea
Book:Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit
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“She said, "Well, that's right, she's going to heaven very soon. And now it's time for us to say good-bye to her and tell her how much we love her." Mary martha nodded and looked at the needlepoint in her hands. "Will her brain still be hurt, in heaven?" she asked. [Rebecca]....said, "Do you remember that time at the beach, when you went into the water with Gran-Gran and the waves were too big and she lifted you up over them? And you two were laughing so much and you said she was the coolest grandmother in the world?" Mary Martha smiled. "Yes" "That is how she will be in heaven," Rebecca said.”

SpiritualityHeavenDeath Of A Loved OneLiterary Fiction
Book:The Monk Upstairs
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“Omeir shivers inside his oxhide cape and watches the river roar past, full of debris and foam, and remembers how Grandfather would say that the littles streams, high on the mountain, small enough to dam with your hand, would eventually join the river, and that the river, though quick and violent, was but a drop in the eye of the great Ocean that encircles all the lands of the world, and contains every dream everyone has ever dreamed.”

FamilyDreamsChildhoodMythologyLiterary Fiction
Book:Cloud Cuckoo Land
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“The click, clack of the typewriter weakened as I casually strolled through the forest. I stopped for a moment, turned back to study the cottage and the faint light in the window. I felt sad for the man because whatever it was that he was smiling about, whatever it was that he was typing, was disappearing with every stroke of the key.”

RomanceDreamsMysterySuspenseLiterary FictionInsomnia
Book:Tales of the Witching Hour: Including: The Man in the Fedora Hat
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“There was something distinctly American about it all, a fundamental difference in perspective and place–in how they saw themselves in the world. And this was what made it so American–not that they felt compassion for mistreated workers three continents away, workers they had never seen or known, whose world they could not begin to understand, not that they felt guilty about their privilege, no,no not that either, but that they felt the need to do something. That they felt they had to power to do something about it. That was what made it so American. That they felt they had the power to do something–they assumed they had that power. They had been born with it–the ability to change the world–and had never questioned its existence, an assumption so massive as to remain unseen. The power and the responsibility to protect the people they imagined as powerless. The poor defenseless people of the Third World. He felts a sudden queasy sadness. What if they knew what a real revolutionary was? How bloody a real revolution. He looked around, suddenly feeling the need to sit, and saw nothing but their faces, their round wet faces staring back at him. What a violence of spirit not to know the world.”

FictionActivismLiterary Fiction
Author:Sunil Yapa
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