Best 4069 quotes in «fiction quotes» category

Southern Appalachians have been ridiculed since the country began. In fiction, they're usually depicted in a cartoonish manner. The region is poor, and very suspicious of outsiders, so there's a sort of 'us versus them' situation. They're easy to poke fun at.

specialize in small cast/single reader long fiction so I only compete against other podcasts of novels in that form.

Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we're probably not going to see.

Spreadsheets are fiction. Believing in what you're doing and what you're building is what's important.

Starring in a science-fiction film doesn't mean you have to act science fiction.

'Star Wars' is more fairy tale than true science fiction.

[Statistics] Fiction in its most uninteresting form.

Stories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world.

Successfully (whatever that may mean) or unsuccessfully, we all overact the part of our favorite character in fiction.

Success has always been the greatest liar - and the "work" itself is a success; the great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer is disguised by his creations, often beyond recognition; the "work," whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have create it; "great men," as they are venerated, are subsequent pieces of wretched minor fiction

Sunshine takes its intelligent and honourable place in the history of grownup science fiction on the screen and on the page: a genre that seeks to break free of parochialism and think about where and why and what we are without the language of religion... I loved Sunshine for its radical proposal that humans can and will do something about a catastrophe, and that our weapons could be used up in the service of preservation.

Surely the job of fiction is to actually tell the truth. It's a paradox that's at the heart of any kind of storytelling.

Teen fiction should be about teenagers - no matter how many arguments there are about what YA lit should be, this seems like the one thing we can all agree on.

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

That is as true for fiction or non-fiction. The writer has to really know their subject. It is really important to remember that the readers are a lot smarter than the writer. Also, good writing has to do with rewriting. You will never get it right the first time. So you rewrite and rewrite again until you get it right. Until you, and the reader, will be able to visualize what you're writing about.

That's one of the reasons I take a lot of consolation in fiction. You have years to work on it. I think that allows you to reach for the best part of your reader instead of a lot of the internet stuff, in which you're kind of reaching for the worst or the most shallow part of your reader.

That's really what SF is all about, you know: the big reality that pervades the real world we live in: the reality of change. Science fiction is the very literature of change. In fact, it is the only such literature we have.

That's the harm of Close Encounters: that it convinces tens of millions that that's what just science fiction is.

That's the wonderful thing about drama and writing and fiction: it's this wonderful shared experience that we all have. We can see into each other's lives.

That's why I have to be a fiction writer, because I can't remember what just happened or where I went last week or what movie I just watched with my husband. I'm better off just making things up.

That the question of likability even exists in literary conversations is odd. It implies that we are engaging in a courtship. When characters are unlikable, they don’t meet our mutable, varying standards. Certainly we can find kinship in fiction, but literary merit shouldn’t be dictated by whether we want to be friends or lovers with those about whom we read.

The adage that fact is stranger than fiction seems to be especially true for the workings of the brain.

The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction. It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.

The aim of fiction is absolute and honest truth.

The anger is useful too because when things about the world upset you, that is really a fertile feeling to channel into fiction and to put out into books.

The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction.

The art of fiction is one of constant seduction. You must persuade the reader on page 1 to start reading - on page 50, or page 150 and yes, on page 850.

The art of writing fiction is to sail as dangerously close to the truth as possible without sinking the ship

The Art of the Romance, though warning us that it is providing fictions, opens a door into the Palace of Absurdity, and when we have lightly stepped inside, slams it shut behind us.

The average family exists only on paper and its average budget is a fiction, invented by statisticians for the convenience of statisticians.

The average ground temperature of the Earth is impossible to measure since most of the Earth is ocean...So this average ground temperature is a fiction.

The beauty of literature - also its limit - is that it is inescapably personal, even if you're writing science fiction.

The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.

The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are purely imaginary.

The best readers come to fiction to be free of ... all that isn't fiction.

The best science fiction is as good as the best fiction in any field.

The better you know someone, the less well you often see them (and the less well they can therefore be transferred into fiction). They may be so close as to be out of focus, and there is no operating novelist to dispel the blur.

The biggest experiment there - and I was convinced for a really long time that it was going to fail horribly - had to do with this weird thing I do every now and then. Like everyone else, as a reader there are certain things that really rub me the wrong way in fiction - pet bugbears, let's call them.

The biggest problem in the fictional treatment of sex is that it's not treated as part of the story but as a pause from the story. The best sex scenes in fiction are the ones that advance the story.

The blurring of fact and fiction has great commercial potential, which is bound to be corrupting in historical terms.

The boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion

The built-in form is a window frame. You can use this genre [crime fiction] to go where you want to go, and explore what you want to explore. In some ways it gives you a lot of freedom because you have a framework readers are looking for.

The character is a piece of fiction. You are yourself, however, and that makes you interesting, because you're alive and you're a human being.

The crime fiction genre offers the writer infinite diversity of theme and treatment.

The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers

The day I was born songs were on records, phones were tied down, computers needed rooms and the web was fiction. Change the world. You can.

the days of our lives vanish utterly, more insubstantial than if they had been invented. Fiction can seem more enduring than reality.

The desire for narration keeps on reasserting itself, so that since modernism and fiction brought narration to an end, it is sought in memoirs.

The difference between science fiction and fantasy … is simply this: science fiction has rivets and fantasy has trees.

The doer is merely a fiction added to the deed ? the deed is everything.