Best 4069 quotes in «fiction quotes» category

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

You learn a lot, writing 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.

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

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

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.

Youth is stranger than fiction.

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 couple hours went by, and the storm began to turn back to the sea. The dark clouds rolled away, leaving white, fluffy ones in their place. We were safe, and the rock in the distance was still there. We stepped out of the car and walked over to the rock, noticing the families of seals were back again. The seals were strong and ready to make it through any storm that would fall their way. My parents’ love was still there; that is what love means. I envy that love, and I hoped to find it someday... and I did.

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.

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.

Across his forehead was stamped the word WORTHLESS. How ironic. Exactly what someone might find stamped on his own forehead if they could see it. Physician, heal thyself.

A death in reverse is the rewinding of life. I do not die of old age, in a bed surrounded by strangers my loved ones paid to take care of me. I die in reverse. I die falling back into a younger age. From my forty-five years to twenty-five. To sixteen. When we were in love. To fourteen: when we first met. To five. To one. To the hospital my mother died at from the complications of my existence. A life for a life.

A delightfully droll look at how the other half lives from a pet pooch's point of view.

Adi could count on one hand the number of times she had ever been afraid of hurting someone she loved. Most of them happened when she was young, but as she walked into the village and saw Helena's anxious face, she realized two things: she was no longer a child and she could not knowingly hurt her, no matter the consequence.

A daughter, a wife, a grandson,' You could say this place took away all I had. I could easily appear to be one of those unfortunate white men you hear about, who thought too lovingly of the other races and civilization of the world, who left his own country in the West to set up a home among them in the East, and was ruined as a result, paying dearly for his foolish mistake. His life smashed to pieces by the barbarians surrounding him.

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

A few days afterwards, Marian announced that she was joining the volunteer nurses. She was posted at Divonne-Les-Bains on the Swiss border, and in her letters to Jeannette she described the disfigured men whose wounds she was cleaning. One was paralytic, and another had lost the use of both hands. One had no thumbs, one had a leg as fat as an elephant’s, one had lost the lower half of his jaw, and smoked cigarettes through his nose. And the violets were blooming in the fields, she said, more fragrant than at home, and yellow primroses lined the forest floor.

A fear of the unknown: what was that called? Worse yet: a fear of the known.

Advice from a Romance Writer: Guys, make your woman feel pretty even on an 'off' day. Trust me, good things will come of it.

A few of the gunslingers dance, but only a few. And they were the young ones. The other ones only sat, and it seemed to me they were half embarrassed in all that light, that civilized light.

A fiction writer is nothing more than the ambassador of an alternative world of their own design. Their success dwells in how many people their work entices to relocate

A force de peindre la vie des autres, il avait oublié de peindre la sienne." On ne se tue pas pour une femme (2000)

After eight days in the sun of the Virgin Islands her skin was brown enough and her hair was returning to its natural colour. She walked miles up and down the beaches and ate nothing except fish and fruit. She slept a lot the first few days. She looked at her wrist and then remembered that her watch was in a bag somewhere. She didn't need it here. She woke with the sun and went to bed after dark. But now she was waiting, so she had looked at her wrist. It was almost dark when the taxi stopped at the end of the small road. He got out, paid the driver and looked at the lights as the car disappeared back up the road. He had one bag. He could see a light from the house between the trees at the edge of the beach, and he walked towards it. He didn't know what to expect. He knew how he felt about her, but did she feel the same? She was waiting at the back of the house, looking out to sea, with a drink in her hand. She smiled at him, put down her drink and let him come to her. They kissed for a long minute. 'You're late,' she said.

After reading Burgum, [Patricia Highsmith] wrote in her cahier that, like Kafka, she felt she was a pessimist, unable to formulate a system in which an individual could believe in God, government or self. Again like Kafka, she looked into the great abyss which separated the spiritual and the material and saw the terrifying emptiness, the hollowness, at the heart of every man, a sense of alienation she felt compelled to explore in her fiction. As her next hero, she would take an architect, 'a young man whose authority is art and therefore himself,' who when he murders, 'feels no guilt or even fear when he thinks of legal retribution'. The more she read of Kafka the more she felt afraid as she came to realise, 'I am so similar to him.

After that he had more or less stopped reading. You could not trust fiction. What good were books, if they couldn't protect you from something like that?

After some time, Fisher said, “Per aspera ad astra.” Quincy turned towards him. “What’s that?” “Latin. It means to the stars through difficulties.” By natural extension of the conversation, she looked up, viewing the faint points of light fighting down through a soft haze. “Does anyone make it, Fisher? To the stars?” “I believe we have, Quince. We’ve seen the worst but known the best.

Again Gabe looked back at Michael, hoping he was about to step in, but all he did was give him a nod. A nod? Really? I don't need a nod. I need someone to stop this! Gabe thought.

Agnes always wanted to go out. Out was better than in. In was inside, in was interior, in was introspection.

Aging and the prospect of dying by no means enhance the attractiveness of fictitious comforts to come in paradise, or the veracity of malicious myths about hellfire and damnation. Fear and feeblemindedness cannot be credibly pressed into service to support fantastic claims about the cosmos and our ultimate destiny. Whether one would even consider turning to religion in advanced years has much to do with upbringing, which makes all the more important standing up to the presumptions of the religious in front of children. One would regard the Biblical events – a spontaneously igniting bush, a sea’s parting, human parthenogenesis, a resurrected prophet and so on – that supposedly heralded God’s intervention in our affairs as the stuff of fairy tales were it not for the credibility we unwittingly lend them by keeping quiet out of mistaken notions of propriety.

A good novel, one which entices the author as much as it beckons the reader.

A good friend will help you move, but a true friend will help you move a body.

A great deal of a child’s life is being asked and being told things by adults and not knowing the answers or what to do. So, I didn’t say anything.

Ah, dear Reader, is there a married man living who hasn’t purged his drawers and closets of premarital memorabilia, only to have one more incriminating relic from yester-life rear its lovely head? Kristy contends that old flames never die, not completely. They smolder for years in hidden places. They flare up again just when you think you’re over them. They can burn you if you don’t deal with them. Such is the price I’ve had to pay for not rooting out the evidence of my life B.C. (Before Contentment). Or, perhaps, for having planted it too well. But that, you see, is no longer an issue. Shall I tell you the crux of this argument? A man with a past can be forgiven. A man without one cannot be trusted. If there were no pictures in my drawer for Kirsty to uncover, I would have had to produce some.

Aku tak ragu mengatakan, bersama denganmu walaupun sebatas embusan angin kunamai ia anugrah

Aku kadang bertanya, kenapa manusia suka sekali mendobrak kenyamanan yang sudah ada. Atas nama mengikuti passion, kata hati, atau mungkin juga hasrat dan nafsu terliarnya.

Allegedly, allegedly I say, the R.G.A. were extremely miffed of portrait painted of their monarch, King Tingaling XX, by Master. Portrait apparently, as it’s yet t’be unveiled, depicts King Tingaling XX in rather compromisin’ position with a pineapple, a wad of cash and his favourite pig, Buttercup.

Alexier found that a dose of humility did wonders to one’s ability to grasp new ideas and, after all, it had been this very ability that made him the researcher he was today.

Alle gevoelens die het lief en leed van een echte persoon in ons oproepen, doen zich alleen maar voor via een voorstelling van dat lief en leed; het vernuft van de eerste romanschrijver bestond erin te begrijpen dat, aangezien in het organisme van onze emoties de voorstelling het enige essentiële element is, de vereenvoudiging die het zijn zou om doodgewoon af te zien van echte personen, een decisieve verbetering zou betekenen. (...) En als de romancier ons eenmaal in die toestand heeft gebracht waarin, zoals bij alle louter innerlijke toestanden, iedere emotie tien keer zo groot wordt en zijn boek ons zal aangrijpen op de manier van een droom, maar van een droom die helderder is dan die wij slapend hebben en die ons langer bijblijft, dan maakt hij bij ons in een uur alle denkbare geluk en ongeluk los waar wij in het leven zelf jaren voor nodig zouden hebben om er iets van te leren kennen, en waarvan de meest intense vormen ons nooit zouden zijn geopenbaard doordat de trage gang waarmee ze zich voordoen ze aan onze waarneming onttrekt (zo verandert in het leven ons hart, en dat is allerpijnlijkst; maar wij kennen die pijn alleen in onze lectuur, in onze verbeelding: in de werkelijkheid verandert het hart, zoals bij sommige natuurverschijnselen gebeurt, zo langzaam dat, al kunnen wij elk van die verschillende toestanden successievelijk vaststellen, ons daarentegen de gewaarwording zelf van de verandering bespaard blijft).

All existence is in vain: unexplained and sterile. I’ll end up alone with all my doubts that will haunt me forever, even after my death..." An excerpt from the book "The Master of the Realities