Fiction Quotes - Page 9

• The older I've got the less I find myself going back and re-reading or really reading new fiction or poetry.

  Reynolds Price

  Reading

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• It is true that some of my fiction was based on actual events. But the events took place after the fiction was written.

  Edward Abbey

  Events, Written

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.33, RosettaBooks

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• For after my marriage I had made various attempts to write fiction. They were clearly failures.

  Mary Augusta Ward

  Marriage, Writing, Made

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• Science fiction readers probably have the gene for novelty, and seem to enjoy a cascade of invention as much as a writer enjoys providing one.

  Walter Jon Williams

  Science, Novelty, Invention

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• I first read science fiction in the old British Chum annual when I was about 12 years old.

  A. E. van Vogt

  Science, Years, Firsts

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• As a child, I read science fiction, but from the very beginnings of my reading for pleasure, I read a lot of non-fictional history, particularly historical biography.

  Norman Spinrad

  Children, Reading, Science

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• Science fiction is very healthy in its form.

  Robert Sheckley

  Science, Healthy, Form

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• In the meantime, I just have to create those realistic goals about the fact that I don't have a ton of options as an actor who's been on a science fiction show for 8 years.

  Michael Shanks

  Science, Years, Goal

  Interview with Ken P., www.ign.com. July 7, 2004.

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• I think if I'm going to do a science fiction, I'm going to go down a new path that I want to do.

  Ridley Scott

  Science, Thinking, Want

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• I understand that postmodern literature probably means people like DeLillo, The Fiction Collective, but I don't get it that those writers are really influenced by postmodern theorists.

  Kathy Acker

  Mean, Hygiene, People

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• The novel doesn't come into existence until certain methods of reproducing fiction come along.

  Leslie Fiedler

  Method, Certain, Existence

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• Against the sustained tick of a watch, fiction takes the measure of a life, a season, a look exchanged, the turning point, desire as brief as a dream, the grief and terror that after childhood we cease to express.

  Mavis Gallant

  Dream, Grief, Childhood

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• All novels are experimental.

  Anthony Burgess

  Novel

  Anthony Burgess, Earl G. Ingersoll, Mary C. Ingersoll (2008). “Conversations with Anthony Burgess”, p.60, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The idea that I'm going to have to sit down to write some fiction where I'm going to have to think of a plot would really scare me, because it would come out a mess.

  Tracey Emin

  Writing, Thinking, Ideas

  Interview with Stephan Collishaw, www.believermag.com. April 2004.

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• I don't read fiction at all.

  Brent Spiner

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• You learn a lot, writing fiction.

  Penelope Lively

  Writing, Writing Fiction

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• No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest.

  Octavia Butler

  Writing, Natural, Guides

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• I'm writing another novel and I know what I'm going to do after, which may be something more like this again, maybe some strange mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

  Penelope Lively

  Writing, Mixtures, May

  "'I'm not a historian but I can get obsessively interested in the past'". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. August 25, 2001.

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• People as me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research.

  Frederik Pohl

  Writing, People, Research

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• Funny how the world always praises its opera-singers so much and pays 'em so well and then starves its shoemakers, and yet it needs good shoes so much more than it needs opera--or war or fiction.

  Sinclair Lewis

  War, Shoes, Needs

  Sinclair Lewis (1915). “The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life”

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• The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.

  Herman Melville

  Fables, Facts, Form

  Herman Melville, Douglas Robillard (2000). “The Poems of Herman Melville”, p.32, Kent State University Press

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• I hate the whole übermensch, superman temptation that pervades science fiction. I believe no protagonist should be so competent, so awe-inspiring, that a committee of 20 really hard-working, intelligent people couldn't do the same thing.

  David Brin

  Hate, Believe, Hard Work

  "David Brin: Dialog With the Future". Locus Magazine Interview, www.locusmag.com. March 1997.

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• Poetry, far more than fiction, reveals the soul of humanity.

  Amy Lowell

  Soul, Humanity

  Amy Lowell (1931). “Tendencies in Modern American Poetry”, p.11, Ardent Media

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• Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth!

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Truth, Lying, Writing

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.8, Penguin

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• As you see, I bear some resentment and some scars from the years of anti-genre bigotry. My own fiction, which moves freely around among realism, magical realism, science fiction, fantasy of various kinds, historical fiction, young adult fiction, parable, and other subgenres, to the point where much of it is ungenrifiable, all got shoved into the Sci Fi wastebasket or labeled as kiddilit - subliterature.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Moving, Years, Historical

  "Ursula K. Le Guin talks about genres, gender, and broadening fiction". Interview with Michael Cunningham, electricliterature.com. April 2, 2016.

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