Best 4069 quotes in «fiction quotes» category

With some exceptions in science fiction and other genres I have small difficulty in avoiding anything that could be called American literature. I feel it is unnatural, not I think entirely because it uses a language that is not mine, however closely akin to my own.

With science fiction there's endless possibilities.

With science fiction I think we are preparing ourselves for contact with them, whoever they may be.

With the historical fictions, I was already doing so much research, and so much of the stories was anchored by historical truth that the move to nonfiction didn't feel all that dramatic - just another half-step to the right.

Witness testimony is always flawed. It's better than circumstantial evidence, sure, but people aren't camcorders; they don't record every action and reaction, and the very act of remembering involves chosing words, actions and images. In other words, any witness who was supposed to be giving a court facts is really just giving them a version of fiction.

Women are far and away the bigger consumers of fiction than men, but men are still far and away the more reviewed, the more critically esteemed, the more respected. That can get frustrating.

Wondrous strong are the spells of fiction.

Words have great cumulative power, but in the 21st century, a single image is much stronger. An image suggests the unvarnished truth. That is its power and its fiction.

Wouldn't it be kinder to say that a lie is a short work of fiction? 'A story' as my daughter says?

Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form

Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn't matter how "real" your story is, or how "made up": what matters is its necessity.

Writing fiction is like remembering what never happened.

Writing fiction, there are no limits to what you write as long as it increases the value of the paper you are writing on.

Writing grew out of the pleasure of escape. My novels are very much outside of my personal experience. That is why I love writing fiction. It allows me to leave my existence and inhabit other lives.

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.

writing fiction is the best thing there is because absolutely everything is possible!

Writing fiction is fundamentally an irrational act.

Writing is very castrating in the moment. Fiction in general, it has no function, nobody asks for it.

Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and nonfiction. And even there, who can be sure?

Writing, of course, it's not all in your head. Not talking about the 'manual' act of typing here either, but that, when your fiction's really working, your whole body's involved, and then some.

Writing poetry helps me to write my fiction; each thing helps the other.

Yeah, I know what your English Professor tried to tell you. But if your English Professor could make a living writing fiction, they would have been doing it.

Yeah I loved, as a kid growing up, I loved science-fiction.

Y'know, we're all wasting our time writing this hack science fiction! You wanta make real money, you gotta start a religion!

You are never alone in Afghanistan. You are always in the company of others, usually family. You don't understand yourself really as an individual, you understand yourself as part of something bigger than yourself. Family is so central to your identity, to how you make sense of your world, it is very dramatic, and therefore an amazing source of storytelling, a source of fiction for me.

You can do anything you like, it's all fiction.

You can assume all photo and video is constructed as a fiction controlled by the person holding the camera and the person who is editing.

You can include essay elements in fiction; this is a very nineteenth century practice.

You cannot create new science unless you realise where the old science leaves off and new science begins, and science fiction forces us to confront this.

You can tell within a sentence if something is fiction or non-fiction. You can tell in the artifice of the language or the care of the construction the difference between art and life.

You can't be wrong in journalism. Take a wrong turn in journalism, and you are writing fiction. You can take a wrong turn in poetry, and something wonderful can happen.

You can't function in society if you don't involve yourself in the fictions society accepts about time. But you do so with the understanding that you're playing a game.

You can't hide behind the guise of fiction. No matter how autobiographical a fictional scene is, you can always tell the reader - in protecting yourself - that you made it up.

You have a great deal of yourself on the line, writing- your vanity is at stake. You discover a tricky thing about fiction writing; a certain amount of vanity is necessary to be able to do it all, but any vanity above that certain amount is lethal.

You know, as fiction writers, if our instincts are off, we can't pay our bills.

You know what the funniest thing about Europe is? It's the little differences.

You know, every year 'Torchwood' has become something a little different than it was before. It's still sci-fi, but it doesn't just deal with spaceships and aliens all the time, because we've done that. Our science fiction is more psychological.

You know, then that the public Somebody you are when you 'have a name' is a fiction created with mirrors and that the only somebody worth being is the solitary and unseen you that existed from your first breath

You learn a lot, writing fiction.

You've been gone so long from all that you know. It's been shuffled aside as you bask in the glow. All the beauitful strangers who whisper your name, do they fill up the emptiness? Larger that life is your fiction, in a universe made upon one.

You read a script and its based on 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction', and it goes right in the bin.

Your eyes wider than distance, this life is sweeter than fiction.

You should spend more time with your families; write that novel you've always wanted to write. You know, the one about the fearless reporter who stands up to the administration. You know - fiction.

You really have to soak up the culture of the people to get it right. If you're making a fiction film, it's entertainment, but you want it to be as real as possible.

Youth is stranger than fiction.

You write fiction, you're writing memoir, and when you're writing memoir, you're writing fiction.

A cada paso, hemos sido frustrados por dios. No el Dios verdadero. Un dios falso creado por el hombre para contribuir a su destrucción de la Tierra. Es el dios-glotón que ve bien engullirlo todo en nombre de una humanidad completamente egoísta. Sus diez mandamientos son: yo primero (déjame vivir como quiera); los humanos primero (que todos los otros seres vivos mueran en mi beneficio); el esperma primero (nada de control de natalidad); los nacimientos primero (nada de abortos); los hombres primero (nada de derechos de la mujer); mi cultura/tribu/religión primero (separatismo/terrorismo); mi raza primero (nada de derechos humanos); mi política primero (puñeteros liberales/podridos reaccionarios); mi país primero (ondea la bandera, la bandera, la bandera); y, sobre todo, los beneficios primero.

A bad leader wouldn't stress the importance of staying together to stop the enemy. You want peace? You can't forgive the enemy, if you can't forgive your men for losing faith. You can't force every one single Union deserter to fight, but I know, only you can inspire every deserter to fight for their cause." - Amelia Raht

A deus ex machina will never appear in real life so you best make other arrangements.

According to Mark, it was a custom of the Roman governor during the feast of Passover to release one prisoner to the Jews, anyone for whom they asked. When Pilate asks the crowd which prisoner they would like to have released—Jesus, the preacher and traitor to Rome, or bar Abbas, the insurrectionist and murderer—the crowd demands the release of the insurrectionist and the crucifixion of the preacher. "Why?" Pilate asks, pained at the thought of having to put an innocent Jewish peasant to death. “What evil has he done?” But the crowd shouts all the louder for Jesus’s death. "Crucify him! Crucify him!" (Mark 15:1–20). The scene is absolutely nonsensical. Never mind that outside the gospels there exists not a shred of historical evidence for any such Passover custom on the part of any Roman governor. What is truly beyond belief is the portrayal of Pontius Pilate—a man renowned for his loathing of the Jews, his total disregard for Jewish rituals and customs, and his penchant for absentmindedly signing so many execution orders that a formal complaint was lodged against him in Rome—spending even a moment of his time pondering the fate of yet another Jewish rabble-rouser.