Best 4069 quotes in «fiction quotes» category

One moment of true happiness was worth all the moments of pain. (Jessica)

One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture; A pale blue eye with a film over it.

One of my professors once told me that the last official act of the British monarchy was when Queen Victoria refused to sign a law that made same-sex acts illegal. It would have made me think more highly of her, except the reason she objected was because she didn’t believe women would do anything like that. Parliament rewrote the law so it was specific to men, and she signed it. A tribute to enlightenment, Queen Victoria was not. Neither, as I have observed before, are werewolf packs.

One of the joys of reading as a writer is that your eye becomes educated: yes, you may become more critical and abandon a higher percentage of novels halfway through, but when a writer gets it really right, the pleasure and admiration can be all the more intense.

One of the things about writing that inspires--and impresses me, is the music words can make. And, like music, the spaces between the notes can mean as much as the notes themselves. -- The Jesus Horse

One realizes the immortality of true love only after the lover dies

One reason why fiction is a human necessity is that it satisfies many unconscious as well as conscious needs. It would be important if it only touched the conscious mind, as expository writing does. But fiction is important, too, because it teaches the unconscious.

One thing an early-on writer has to learn, is to be comfortable with and responsive to critique. When five people in a group tell you this chapter sucks; don’t snap back at them with, “Sure, but it gets better in another 6 or 7 chapters!” Listen. – Thank them. – Consider. They can look from a fresh perspective, and catch things that you might be too close to see. But, you will also learn along the way that not everyone in a group of relative amateurs themselves, is going to catch everything, and there will be a few who seem to never understand much of anything. Some will always want paragraphs chopped down to explosive missiles of passion, while others are more used to long composite paragraphs that I myself find impossible to wade through. You may, once you have hit your full stride and power, feel comfortable telling a few of them, “Look. This isn’t a diner. I don’t take orders: ‘I’m gluten intolerant; he can’t do salt; she’s allergic to peanuts ...’ “If what I offer is a salad bar, then No; I am not going to fry you up a cheesesteak!

One way to think about your life is as an extended free fall. An epiphany may help you see better as you fall. Rather than a meaningless blur, you will see rocks and trees and lizards. An epiphany is not a parachute.

One word absent from a sentence, or misinterpreted incorrectly, can change the entire meaning of a sentence. One word can change the meaning of everything. Before you believe anything about God or anybody, ask yourself how well do you trust the transmitter, translator or interpreter. And if you have never met them, then how do you know if the knowledge you acquired is even right? One hundred and twenty-five years following every major event in history, all remaining witnesses will have died. How well do you trust the man who has stored his version of a story? And how can you put that much faith into someone you don't know?

One wrong social move---say---like hanging with the wrong person,” she said nastily, “Can make your life around here a living nightmare and I definitely don’t think that you want that.

On her way back to their room, it occurred to Nnu Ego that she was a prisoner, imprisoned by her love for her children, imprisoned by her role as the senior wife. She was not even expected to demand more money for her family; that was considered below the standard expected of a woman in her position. It was not fair, she felt, the way men cleverly used a woman’s sense of responsability to actually enslave her. They knew that the traditional wife like herself would never dream of leaving her children.

Only through fiction can we think about the unthinkable...

Only death can finish the fight, everything else only interrupts the fighting.

Only fiction has the power to cross the mental barricades, to make strangers intelligible to each other, because it moves people's hearts as well as engaging their minds.

Only then, as she prepared to cross the avenue, did she again spot the man in the fedora hat. He was at the opposite side of the street from where he’d stood before, but the caramel color of his coat was unmistakable. He was loitering in front of what looked like a Ford V8 parked nose-up on the sidewalk. Florence adjusted her shawl over her shoulders and crossed to the opposite corner of the plaza. When she turned back to look again, he was gone

On occasion he would think back to the fiercest passion it had been his pleasure to experience and reflect on what might have been. He would look upon the woman who occupied the opposite half of his bed and feel his life had not quite lived up to the promise of another day. These moments would be mercifully brief, or so he hoped.

On occasion we stumble upon what seems to be a truth. Compared to the surrounding blackness, it sparkles and dazzles our eyes. But are these actually truths? Are our eyes really feasting upon light? Or just patches of grey?

On the blank page all things are possible.

On the misty window of her room, she let her finger trace a broken line. She was that line.

Opal Raines stood on a cliff high above the surf that beat into the rocks on Cape Point at the southmost tip of the African continent. In front of her was the Indian Ocean and the islands of the Far East; to her right the Southern Ocean, Antarctica, and the icy bottom of the earth; at her back the Atlantic and the Americas; and on her left the vast plains of Africa where she had sometimes lived, and where she had been worshiped by wild lions. She read again the notification that had come today from Switzerland: Dear Ms. Raines. This is to notify you that the sum of ten million dollars (US) was transferred today into your account at Credit Suisse by Stella Clair Rose. Opal tore the notice into small pieces, and watched them fly from her hand, blown by the African breeze out across the ocean water. Her laugh followed the pieces as they floated away, drifting out wherever the wind would take them, toward Indonesia, the Banda Sea, Papua New Guinea, the great expanse of the Pacific — all her world, the world of the statistical outlier merging time past, and time not yet come, with this moment. All as unpredictable as shadows, as ghosts. Sometime later, that laugh, floating on an eastbound wind, would reach the California coast and come to rest where it did once before — on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles where Heron White’s body landed after he crashed through a twelfth-floor window at the end of a hallway outside a dentist’s office one rainy day at noon.

Oooo wee! You see that chump go flying? Look’eah, nothing like charred demon to make a brotha feel right. - Calvin Freeman (Sineaters‬:Devotion Book One)

Orang itu berdo(s)a setelah berdo(s)a.

Oscar always said that books are truly our best friends. He said that they never think poorly of us and that they always have a shoulder for us to cry on or relieve stress. They take our minds away from the real world by telling us captivating stories. When we look back at our choice of books, we can nostalgically recall our younger years.

Other than along certain emotional tangents there was little in the book that felt as if it had actually been lived. It was a fiction produced by someone who knew only fictions, The Tempest as written by isolate Miranda, raised on the romances in her father's library.

Our future depends on stories. As the world advances, literature has the ability to ground us—in our humanness, our imaginations, and our enlightenment.

Our first kiss was there on the bridge in the woods. How do you describe a first kiss? It is like trying to hold water in your hands. There is an ancient Chinese proverb that compares kissing to drinking salted water. “You drink, and your thirst increases,” it says. Time, I’m sure, passed by, but we remained unavailable for comment.

Our friend Chewy doesn’t speak much, but he chews a lot of tobacco so we call him Chewbacco.

Our pendants glowed in unison and I understood that they represented us – Siren and human intertwined for eternity.

Our relationship with literary characters, at least to those that exercise a certain attraction over us, rests in fact on a denial. We know perfectly well, on a conscious level, that these characters “do not exist,” or in any case do not exist in the same way as do the inhabitants of the real world. But things manifest in an entirely different way on the unconscious level, which is interested not in the ontological differences between worlds but in the effect they produce on the psyche. Every psychoanalyst knows how deeply a subject can be influenced, and even shaped, sometimes to the point of tragedy, by a fictional character and the sense of identification it gives rise to. This remark must first of all be understood as a reminder that we ourselves are usually fictional characters for other people […]

Outbreaks of unvarnished truths in the backyard of our true self can be very precious and inspiring, even though we might inconsistently be tempted to give in to the exhilarating perfume of fables and fairy tales or to flattering praise and fiction. ("The day the mirror was talking back")

Over the green squares of the fields and the low curves of a wood there rose in the distance a grey, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his gaze fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so deep.

Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold.

(Out of the Shadow is) Exceptional....Meticulously plotted, beautifully paced, its an intelligent, fascinating story that draws you in. I couldn't put it down, a great read.. Winn, masterfully weaves together the lives of characters into a rich and vivid tapestry, all the while exploring complex human emotions. A definite page turner. Patricia O'Halloran

Outside of the usual bar or nightclub, it's not every day that I get a drink bought for me-at least not by strangers and certainly not on a workday. On that Saturday, in September 2010, it was from three separate individuals.

Outside the Bar Del Prado, night was coming on like a hopeless, drunken come-on, tequila on its breath, red neon signs and, outside the shops, strings of colored Christmas lights hung from the eaves like the sad, close-lipped smiles of boys who would lure you in with their loneliness, that melancholia you'd try and try to fix.

Pain is an inevitable part when you truly love.

Ô, wine!, the truth-serum so potent that all those who wish to live happy lives should abstain from drinking it entirely!... except of course when they are alone.

Pak Karman hugged his wife’s gravestone tightly. “You left without saying farewell!” The whole of the graveyard was ablaze with light.

Paradoxically, however, a story ceases to be like life on its last page. Life goes on, but the story does not. Its characters have no vitality outside the first page and after the last is only good as the next reader's.

Pain is fuel. Cherish it Elexis. It pushes you to the recreation of yourself. It pushes you to be who you really are bareboned

Patience is a virtue Savannah, to tolerate delay. It implies self control and forbearance, as opposed to wanting what we want when we want it. Something to think about. . . Catherine Weaver (Character), "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Pastor McFucking Bride this . . . Pastor McFucking Bride that. Fuck him!

Peace is one thing, revolution is another. You were either impatient or highly optimistic to think one would lead to the other. – Panchali Draupadi.

Peeta opens his mouth for the first bite without hesitation. He swallows, then frowns slightly. "They're very sweet." "Yes they're sugar berries. My mother makes jam from them. Haven't you've ever had them before?" I say, poking the next spoonful in his mouth. "No," he says, almost puzzled. "But they taste familiar. Sugar berries?" "Well, you can't get them in the market much, they only grow wild," I say. Another mouthful goes down. Just one more to go. "They're sweet as syrup," he says, taking the last spoonful. "Syrup." His eyes widen as he realizes the truth. I clamp my hand over his mouth and nose hard, forcing him to swallow instead of spit. He tries to make himself vomit the stuff up, but it's too late, he's already losing consciousness. Even as he fades away, I can see in his eyes what I've done is unforgiveable. I sit back on my heels and look at him with a mixture of sadness and satisfaction. A stray berry stains his chin and I wipe it away. "Who can't lie, Peeta?" I say, even though he can't hear me.

People are complicated. And messy. Seems too convenient that we’d all fit inside some multiple-choice question.

Paul Robinson, I'm coming, it has taken me a while, but I have almost caught up with you. Keep running, if you cannot run walk, if you cannot walk crawl, if you cannot do this dream. Paul Robinson author.

People believe in everything except the reality.

People in books were always so charming, and all their thoughts and actions so comprehensible. They all invariably had a clear, well-defined object in life, and strove through a few hundred engrossing pages to attain this object. They were all noble and generous, and their lives were bright and beautiful. What interesting and delightful moments Irene had passed in their society! They had made her laugh and cry and suffer and rejoice, and had entertained her with the brilliancy of their wit. How dull and colourless real people had appeared beside these heroes and heroines of fiction.

People have incredible nerve to do terrible things, but never actually admit to them.