Best 4069 quotes in «fiction quotes» category

The marks we leave are too often scars.

The moderns say we must not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have the right to punish anybody else.

The monkey liked most humans. They left food cans outside their homes for his family to rummage through in the morning sun. Some yelled and threw sticks, but were slow and didn’t bite. Humans were mostly harmless.

The more I learn about life and people, the more I realise that everyone has a story and everyone’s story is the biggest in their own mind.” - Laylla Jonson

The more we prepare for war, the more we make it a reality. Yet, it would seem, to prepare for war may also be the best and possibly the only way to avoid it.’ – Govinda Shauri, The Aryavarta Chronicles - Kurukshetra

The morning was brisk and the coffee was hot and roasted with little gurgles in the room. Rosie hadn’t moved, but she let out a tiny snore every now and again that made everything perfect.

The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed for ever on her bosom.

The music spread out of the f-shaped holes, spilling over the floor, easing and pulling, and Quincy gave herself to the personality of the sound. It was safe. It was straightforward. The sound of the violin was all the humanity that Quincy could stand.

The nation has been turned upside down and inside out. The country that was once discovered by people seeking religious freedom is now oppressing religious rights. It has been a slow train rumbling down the track of destruction since the 1960's. It started with the removal of the Bible from our public schools. Next the generation known as the 'love generation' opened the door for the approval of sex outside of marriage. For every ten years since then, it's been a slippery slope of materialism, I got mine, what can you do for me, and money is power. "We as a nation have stopped focusing on God and family and replaced them with money and success. Parents are teaching their children to do whatever it takes to get ahead...just don't get caught. If you do, find someone to blame it on.

The new day is almost here, but the old one is still dragging its heavy skirts. Just as ocean water and river water struggle against each other at a river mouth, the old time and the new time clash and blend.

The northern star changes its position every ten thousand years, but friendships can last for all eternity. — RJPeters

Then he was there, turned half toward her with a guarded expression etched across his face. She didn't stop or even slow her step. When she reached him, she grabbed the front of his shirt in both fists, pulling him to her, pushing her mouth up into his. Heat swirled through her as she pulled his face even closer, tighter. His arms wound around her and their bodies melded with a rightness she didn't bother to question. Her lips filled with the sweetness of his mouth and Tamani held her against him as if he could somehow pull her inside him, make her part of him. And for a moment, she did feel like a part of him. As if their kiss bridged the gap between the two worlds, even if only for that one brief, sparkling moment. A sigh that held the weight of years shuddered out of Tamani as their faces drew apart. "Thank you," Tamani whispered, almost too quiet to be heard.

The night came on as swift and soft as a velvet dream. I was scrunched down in the front seat of my car in Neal's driveway trying to become part of the darkness.

Then it doesn't matter which way you walk...-so long as I get somewhere.

Then maybe you’ll believe me when I say…you’re pretty fucking special, Laney Hill.

Then I realized the vital necessity of art. Human life, yes, you nurse people, you clean house, you market, but then comes the moment of solace and flight. i sit and write and summon other friends, other forms of life, other experiences, and the voyage and the exploration, the delving into character, the vast expanse of life's possibilities and potentialities, contemplation of future travels, of dazzling friendships, all this then makes the chores and the sacrifices beautiful because they are diverted toward some beautiful aim, they become part of the structure of a work of art.

The novel's spirit is the spirit of complexity. . . . The novel's spirit is the spirity of continuity . . . a thing made to last, to connect the past with the future.

...the nuclear family went critical...

The notion of my future suddenly snapped into focus: it didn't exist yet. I was making it, standing there, breathing, fixing the air around my body with stillness, trying to capture something—a thought, I guess—as though such a thing were possible, as though I believed in the delusion described in those paintings—that time could be contained, held captive.

Then, slowly, my feet settled to the ground. Before I had taken six steps I sagged like a sail when the wind fades. As I walked back through the town, past sleeping houses and dark inns, my mood swung from elation to doubt in the space of three brief breaths. I had ruined everything. All the things I had said, things that seemed so clever at the time, were in fact the worst things a fool could say. Even now she was inside, breathing a sigh of relief to finally be rid of me. But she had smiled. Had laughed. She hadn't remembered our first meeting on the road from Tarbean. I couldn't have made that much of an impression on her. 'Steal me,' she had said. I should have been bolder and kissed her at the end. I should have been more cautious. I had talked too much. I had said too little.

Then someone within closed the door, shutting Norah out into the howling dust of the night. The clouds parted briefly to reveal the full moon's cold eye, then closed again. Wind seared over the pavilion's double roof, its voice rising to a shriek. Distantly, among the maze of walls, came the frenzied barking of hundreds of tiny dogs. As she drifted towards wakefulness, Norah could not tell whether it was the wind that she heard just at the end, or whether, within the dark hall, the girl had begun to scream.

Then, the door opens and there he is; silhouetted in the hall light. Long hair, long legs, and a heartbeat in tune with my own.

Then the sun came up and shook the night chill out of the air the way you'd shake a rug.

The novel remains for me one of the few forms...where we can describe, step by step, minute by minute, our not altogether unpleasant struggle to put ourselves into a viable and devout relationship to our beloved and mistaken world.

Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her.

The one thing is fiction in a novel and the other thing is reality. With fiction you don't make a fuss - you can 'beat it' and there's never enough. At least in my opinion - cause there are people, who complain about style intensity in literature: they prefer cereals with milk than abyssinian bitches roasted alive on bringhausers and watered with ya-yoo juice.

The ocean swells around us. Sometimes, we are in a bowl of water and sometimes on the top of the lip. The horizon curves. We are sitting on top of the world. In theory, anyone is on the top of their world at every moment, given that the Earth is truly round. But, it’s hard to see that in a subway under New York City and completely obvious out here.

The ocean drummed as loud as pulsating blood, eroding the sand, rushing the beach as if it had a point to prove. And like many things, it receded, was gone, and was replaced anew.

The old are often forgotten. Life moves on without a care for those who wish to remain in the past. We tend to talk too much because it’s rare that we’re listened to.

The old law of an eye for an eye didn’t make them blind to the fact that another man’s terrorist wasn’t their freedom fighter.

The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the Q letter into a privet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is unavoidable.

The only real purpose of time is to escort humanity in and out of this mortal coil in an orderly fashion.

The only thing better than a well-read book is a well-read book only read by yourself.

The only way that you can identify and then fulfill your life’s purpose is for you to love yourself, charge up your life and serve the world.

The only true law is that which leads to freedom," Jonathan said. "There is no other.

The only unforgivable sin is to look into the human heart without compassion.

The only way that America can protect its prosperity and political stability will be to depopulate the Third World? Should we be surprised that the AIDS virus showed up about 1975? Do you understand what the term "depopulate" means?

The only one everlasting love is the unrealized one. The love to this thing that you’d never had. Behind it is hidden the love to your own ego and feelings.

The only sweeter than union is reunion.

The only thing more interesting than the truth is fiction dressed up as the truth.

The only things worth seeing are beyond what you can actually see.

The only wand you'll ever need is a better-feeling thought.

The pain did hurt me like a knife and agonised me. A dejected nostalgia inundated my heart but I had to stick with the realities that were sunk in the quagmires of differences.

The pain is real. Flowing as a brook beneath my flesh. I am broken, and yet, I still breathe.

The other one was filled with loud and obnoxious tourists. Always boasting on winning a sand castle competition and seeing who could get tanned first. What a whacky bunch of people.

The painter and the writer are not just copyists or even illusionists, but through some deeper vision of their subject-matter may become privileged truth tellers.

the presence of an old salt aboard the Elizabeth Seaman was profoundly reassuring. “Iron men in wooden boats,” they were called, as opposed to the wooden men in iron boats of today, like Kittredge, Farmingdale, and Eddie himself. Old salts partook of an origin myth, being close to the root of all things, including language. Eddie had never noticed how much of his own speech derived from the sea, from “keeled over” to “learning the ropes” to “catching the drift” to “freeloader” to “gripe” to “brace up” to “taken aback” to “leeway” to “low profile” to “the bitter end,” or the very last link on a chain. Using these expressions in a practical way made him feel close to something fundamental—a deeper truth whose contours he believed he’d sensed, allegorically, even while still on land. Being at sea had brought Eddie nearer that truth. And the old salts were nearer still.

The pleasure of this kind of narrative is not that we think we are reading about the real world (although the story usually does map onto our world fairly closely), but rather that the wings of symmetry are unfolding around us; briefly we are on a planet where, as E.M. Forster says, there are no secrets and human behavior makes sense. I call this 'fiction.

The problem with a lot of people who read only literary fiction is that they assume fantasy is just books about orcs and goblins and dragons and wizards and bullshit. And to be fair, a lot of fantasy is about that stuff. The problem with people in fantasy is they believe that literary fiction is just stories about a guy drinking tea and staring out the window at the rain while he thinks about his mother. And the truth is a lot of literary fiction is just that. Like, kind of pointless, angsty, emo, masturbatory bullshit. However, we should not be judged by our lowest common denominators. And also you should not fall prey to the fallacious thinking that literary fiction is literary and all other genres are genre. Literary fiction is a genre, and I will fight to the death anyone who denies this very self-evident truth. So, is there a lot of fantasy that is raw shit out there? Absolutely, absolutely, it’s popcorn reading at best. But you can’t deny that a lot of lit fic is also shit. 85% of everything in the world is shit. We judge by the best. And there is some truly excellent fantasy out there. For example, Midsummer Night’s Dream; Hamlet with the ghost; Macbeth, ghosts and witches; I’m also fond of the Odyessey; Most of the Pentateuch in the Old Testament, Gargantua and Pantagruel. Honestly, fantasy existed before lit fic, and if you deny those roots you’re pruning yourself so closely that you can’t help but wither and die.

THE POUNDING RAIN HAD STOPPED as suddenly as it had begun. Sheets of silver green neon clung hungrily to the moist black asphalt like some reptilian skin.