Fiction Quotes - Page 4

• That is partly why women marry - to keep up the fiction of being in the hub of things.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Hub

  ELIZABETH BOWEN (1935). “The House in Paris”

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• Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.

  Ray Bradbury

  Art, Writing, Ideas

  Ray Bradbury, Sam Weller (2012). “Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews”, p.284, Melville House

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• My favourite all-time work of fiction: Lord of the Rings. My favourite all-time nonfiction book: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Ask me again next week, you'll get a different answer.

  Orson Scott Card

  Book, Gun, Next Week

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• As man sows, so shall he reap. In works of fiction, such men are sometimes converted. More often, in real life, they do not change their natures until they are converted into dust.

  Charles W. Chesnutt

  Real, Men, Dust

  Charles W. Chesnutt (2015). “The Marrow of Tradition”, p.222, Xist Publishing

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• As a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction, and I've forgotten most of what I did read.

  Mark Haddon

  Kids, Forgotten, Deals

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• I don't mean that literary fiction is better than genre fiction, On the contrary; novels can perform two functions and most perform only one.

  Mark Haddon

  Mean, Two, Nasty

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• I cannot say how strongly I object to people using other people's writing as research. Research is non-fiction, especially for horror, fantasy, science fiction. Do not take your research from other people's fiction. Just don't.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Writing, People, Research

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• As far as I'm concerned, the only difference between fact and what most people call fiction is about fifteen pages in the dictionary.

  Charles de Lint

  Differences, People, Fifteen

  "Dreams Underfoot : The Newford Collection". Book by Charles de Lint, 2003.

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• I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.

  Robert Morgan

  Writing, Thinking, Writing Poetry

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• A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  World, Fit, Masterpiece

  Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lectures on Don Quixote”, p.21, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.

  Manuel Puig

  Writing, Order, Imagination

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• I think Junior is certainly a science fiction premise as is Twins, as is Dave, beyond Ghostbusters.

  Ivan Reitman

  Thinking, Juniors, Twins

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• Aren't most romance heros, or heros in fiction of any kind, generally superior to real men? Same goes for heroines and real women.

  Nora Roberts

  Real, Hero, Men

  "Nora Roberts on her MacGregor Series". All About Romance Interview, allaboutromance.com.

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• No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.

  Amy Tan

  Encouragement, Thinking, My Family

  "Author of The Joy Luck Club". The Academy of Achievement, www.achievement.org. June 28, 1996.

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• Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

  John Updike

  Writing, Sea, Sailing

  Hugging the Shore foreword (1984)

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• Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

  Gore Vidal

  Country, Business, Writing

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• Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

  Oscar Wilde

  Writing, Painful, Duty

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.740, GENERAL PRESS

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• When I die, I'm leaving my body to science fiction.

  Steven Wright

  Death, Fun, Science

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• There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius. They give us, in the guise of fiction, something equivalent to the actual density of the real, that density which life offers us every day but which we are unable to grasp because we are amusing ourselves with lies.

  Simone Weil

  Real, Lying, Giving

  Simone Weil (1977). “The Simone Weil Reader”

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• I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled "Science Fiction" ... and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Mistake, Serious, Sci Fi

  "Science Fiction". The New York Times Book Review, September 5, 1965.

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• Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

  Mark Twain

  Truth, Stranger, Truth Is

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• It's better to read first rate science fiction than second rate science-it's a lot more fun, and no more likely to be wrong.

  Martin Rees

  Fun, Firsts, Rate

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• A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Movie, Film Directing, Independent Filmmaking

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.

  Philip K. Dick

  Sorry, Writing, Knows

  Philip K. Dick (1985). “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon”, Doubleday Books

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• A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Telling The Truth

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