Best 4069 quotes in «fiction quotes» category

Good fiction doesn’t claim to mirror reality at all. It indicts reality by providing a paradigm of shape and order and justice—the way we all know things should be—without suggesting that’s how things really are. Good fiction is the mirage that declares itself a mirage, yet compels us to faith through its beauty. Good fiction is the dream that’s too good to be true, so perfect and symmetrical that it gives itself away every time. But it doesn’t trick you into suspending your disbelief by trying to look anything like reality. Good fiction makes you acutely, painfully aware of your disbelief, and makes you believe anyway. And when it’s done well—when it’s done right—good fiction is more real than reality.

Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

Good horror offers a sense of an upended, lawless world and that’s appealing to anyone who grew up feeling like an outsider.

Good writing should help us see the world in new ways, it should crack open our generosity towards each other. That's what I hope my work does anyway. I want someone to read it and know that they aren't alone in the universe. I want my words to act as connective tissue.

Good night, and may your nights always be bright with stars!

Good writing ideas don’t have to be about political turmoil, mass killings, capitalism, racism, injustice, and so on. Find that one idea that has deep roots in your heart.

Gory frontline memories from war in the Philippines returned to Mitch as he submerged himself in the brush. He sunk deep into the leaves and mud, and stayed there. He remembered scenes from the jungle. The tremors of falling bombs. The smell of smoke.

Gossip is not adopted by the bored. It is an art of discourse adopted by those who have experienced absolutely nothing thrilling in their lives; they have never really fallen in love or casually spoken to a complete stranger, and they never dreamt of doing anything extraordinary. They are a group of people with dull lives and souls.

Grandmother sat in the magic forest and carved outlandish animals. She cut them from branches and driftwood and gave them paws and faces, but she only hinted at what they looked like and never made them too distinct. They retained their wooden souls...

Grades are misconceptions that form people’s perceptions.

Grandpa Sereno: "There is nothing as dangerous as fear, fear of people who are different than you. Fear is the REAL danger and we must start to put all our efforts into fighting THAT instead of each other. Fight fear not people!!! Let there be light!

Granted, there is always much that is hidden, and we must not forget that the writing of history - however dryly it is done and however sincere the desire for objectivity - remains literature. History's third dimension is always fiction

Grayson: Fiction is just a lie anyway. Brianna: But it's not - it's a different kind of truth - it would be your truth at the time of the writing, wouldn't it?

Great characters- They are pivotal for a great plot. THEN a solid plot: Why then? If you do not have great characters it is impossible to create a good plot, nonetheless a solid one. Once you have built great characters for the scenes, there you have it. It’s just like the movies, you cannot have a great film if the characters are frail and their lines are weak as well. I guess great world-building comes along with a good plot. If there is something that will work fine in a novel is how you will develop from the theme. You’ve got to establish a good timeline, and from there it comes a world. You see the technical matters don’t match or matter as much to me. Even a poorly written story, if there is a good plot and great characters on it will make a divine combination There are simply many cases of it over the mainstream and that even reached the big screen.

Great fiction is the art of a soul.

Great writing comes from nowhere and is about nothing. It is pure invention.

Grimes believed in what he did, with no doubts. Though he was older than me by over a decade, I suddenly felt old. Some things mark your soul, not in years but in blood and pain and selling off parts of yourself to get the bad guys, until you finally look in the mirror and aren’t sure which side you’re on anymore. There comes a point when having a badge doesn’t make you the good guy, it just makes you one of the guys. I needed to be one of the good guys, or what the hell was I doing?

Gretchen VanTreese (from The Crimson Corset) is easily the most heartless character I’ve ever written. Ruthless, self-obsessed, and ambitious beyond her means, she is the epitome of greed and overindulgence. This is woman who keeps handsome young men as pets, a staff of venom-addicted employees to do her daytime bidding, and a basement full of bound human delicacies.

Grief is like an ocean. It comes in waves - some waves are bigger than others and you cannot prepare for it.

Grover spit expertly between his teeth. "You know, Nerburn," he said, "you're like those treaty negotiators we used to have to deal with. Always in a hurry. Sometimes there are preliminaries." "There are preliminaries and there are evasions," I said. "Look out there." I swept my hand across the blazing, parched horizon. "We've got to get moving if we want to get up there before it's a hundred and ten degrees." "Just relax. He's just doing it the Lakota way, by laying out the history. That's how we remember our history, by telling our story," "But does every story have to start with Columbus?" "Everything starts with Columbus. At least everything to do with white people." "But what's with the French fries?" "He likes to get rid of the salt." "No, the piles. First he insists on getting exactly twenty-eight, then he divides them into piles. It doesn't make any sense." A small smile crept across Grover's face. "How many piles?" he asked. "Four." He spit one more time onto the ground. It made a small puff of explosion in the dust. "Mmm. Twenty-eight French fries. Four piles of seven." He made a great charade of counting on his fingers. "Let's see. Four seasons. Four directions. Four stages of life. "Seven council fires. Seven sacred rituals. The moon lives for twenty-eight days. Yeah, I guess that doesn't make any sense." "That's crazy," I said. "What is it? Some kind of Lakota French fry rosary?

Gugur bukan berarti sedih. Bagi angsana, gugur adalah kebahagiaan. Bahagia guguran bunganya menjadi berarti. Setidaknya bagi angin yang menghirup harum bunganya. Menggugurkan sesuatu untuk orang lain adalah awal kebahagiaan jika didasari dengan ketulusan. Seperti pohon angsana yang tulus menggugurkan bunganya untuk dinikmati manusia. Bagi manusia, menikmati guguran bunga angsana merupakan kebahagiaan yang tak bisa dijelaskan dengan kata-kata, karena memang banyak hal di dunia ini yang tak dapat dijelaskan. Hanya bisa dirasakan.

Guilt makes people do the weirdest things. It must be awful to have a conscience.

Hagnon fixes a value to everything. It occurs to Alexander that the man would probably sell his mother for an obol and consider it a deal.

Halfway to the house Stan stopped and turned to Jane. He put his hands on her shoulders and drew her toward him. "I'm glad we're going steady," he whispered. "So am I." In spite of the reassuring weight of his bracelet on her wrist, Jane suddenly felt shy. It seemed strange to be so close to Stan, to feel his crisp clean shirt against her cheek. She could not look up at him. Gently Stan lifted her face to his. "You're my girl," he whispered. -Fifteen

Halcyons are never supportive of dream hoverers and their associates.

Happily chatting and counting pocket change, patting each other on the back and whistling foolish songs, we go out on the thousand-legged street and miraculously turn into passersby.

Hate was the blazing beauty that consumed the world in its flames. Love could never consume anything but the heart of a fool.

Hate did not give way to heroism.

HATE is the shortest of human emotions, it is stronger than love, more compelling than lust. Page 30. THE SCALPEL – GAME BENEATH (www.hsrissam.com

Have you ever believed in something so completely that you were willing to give up everything and everyone in your life to protect it?

Have you lost your mind? What have I told you Charlie about whales? You can’t MANHANDLE THEM!

Have you ever seen a world fall to its knees? Watch, and learn.

He ascended the mountain in darkness, no lamplight, a world black and silver and blue. The moon lay scattered through the woods in blades, glowing palely, the wind rising now and again to moan through the trees. The trail scrawled ever upward, toward the looming darkness of the mountain's peak. Above it all the sea of night, the strange ornamentation of stars.

Heavy is the head that holds the pen of creation. We construct these characters from nothing, molding them from our imaginations. We give them hopes and dreams and unique personalities until they feel so real you’re mind believes it must be so. We watch them grow by our hands, not always knowing the paths they will choose with the obstacles we throw at them. They take on a life of their own and often surprise even us by their actions we couldn’t have imagined before it poured out of us onto the paper. We could change it if we really wanted to, but it would be forced and not be true to the characters. And when something tragic happens and one is lost, we feel that loss even though we know they were not a friend, a family member or even ourselves. It can be a hard thing to voice sometimes, to give tribute to the one’s left behind with the real sadness over something not so real. But we find the words and press on to the next challenge, because that's what good writers do.

He attained the highest mastery of Korean martial arts—he could hurl himself through the air and crack cement blocks with his bare hands. In knife-fighting drills, he developed a thousand different reflexes to disarm and stab people. He learned to shoot all manner of firearms…Justin Moon had become the ideal South Korean soldier—with stony strength, quickness, and above all, endurance.

He could not have faced her right then. He had started to sense their relationship was over, that she wanted more than he could ever give her. They hardly saw each other any longer, had nothing much to discuss, and had even ceased doing the one thing they were good at. Still, to smell the sheets where she had lain brought him a certain peace, lulling him to sleep under the veil of her perfume. He dreamed they were married, running beneath a flurry of white rose petals, and then a door slammed shut, and suddenly he was awake. He was back at Cedar House, and it was night and the room was dark.

He didn’t wait for her to react. Their mutual desire was obvious. He started kissing her mouth first gently, then harder. He pushed her into the wall and started to slip her robe off. She was intoxicated by his touch. She reeled him in closer. They crashed into the bedroom.

He'd never known he had so much fight in him. Never known he could be capable of so much... He was going to change the world.

Having vision is much more than just being visual.

He built his career on his mysterious Hispanic grandmother Dolorosa, who was born on the border of Mexico at a time when nobody could tell if it was part of Texas or Fort Apache.

He’d reached that perilous stage of being drunk enough to think himself a good dancer… but was dangerously close in tipping over to the point where he’d act like an arse

He didn't remember ever being less weird than he was right now. In fact, as far as he could tell he had always been more or less exactly as weird as this. if not more so.

He felt as if he had left a stage behind and many actors. He felt as if he had left the great seance and all the murmuring ghosts. He was moving from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was unreal because it was new.

He felt as though the bones of his ribcage were snapping beneath the weight of the stone that God had laid over his heart.

He had no idea of my misery. It would have surprised him to think that I was a human creature with a soul.

He had panicked. Tessier cursed his own stupidity. He should have remained in the column where he would have been protected. Instead, he saw an enemy coming for him like a revenant rising from a dark tomb, and had run first instead of thinking. Except this was no longer a French stronghold. The forts had all been captured and surrendered and the glorious revolutionary soldiers had been defeated. If the supply ships had made it through the blockade, Vaubois might still have been able to defend the city, but with no food, limited ammunition and disease rampant, defeat was inevitable. Tessier remembered the gut-wrenching escape from Fort Dominance where villagers spat at him and threw rocks. One man had brought out a pistol and the ball had slapped the air as it passed his face. Another man had chased him with an ancient boar spear and Tessier, exhausted from the fight, had jumped into the water. He had nearly drowned in that cold grey sea, only just managing to cling to a rock whilst the enemy searched the shoreline. The British warship was anchored outside the village, and although Tessier could see men on-board, no one had spotted him. Hours passed by. Then, when he considered it was clear, he swam ashore to hide in the malodorous marshland outside Mġarr. His body shivered violently and his skin was blue and wrinkled like withered fruit, but in the night-dark light he lived. He had crept to a fishing boat, donned a salt-stained boat cloak and rowed out to Malta's monochrome coastline. He had somehow managed to escape capture by abandoning the boat to swim into the harbour. From there it had been easy to climb the city walls and to safety. He had written his account of the marines ambush, the fort’s surrender and his opinion of Chasse, to Vaubois. Tessier wanted Gamble cashiered and Vaubois promised to take his complaint to the senior British officer when he was in a position to. Weeks went past. Months. A burning hunger for revenge changed to a desire for provisions. And until today, Tessier reflected that he would never see Gamble again. Sunlight twinkled on the water, dazzling like a million diamonds scattered across its surface. Tessier loaded his pistol in the shadows where the air was still and cool. He had two of them, a knife and a sword, and, although starving and crippled with stomach cramps, he would fight as he had always done so: with everything he had.

He had been held to her by a beautiful thread which it pained him to spoil by breaking, rather than by a chain he could not break.

He is a free man, not because is in a poition of political power and influence that you will never be able to achieve, and not because he has more character and heart in his fingertip than you have in your entire being, but because he is a man, and is thus entitled to be free.

He had to die someday too. He might do it on sheets with a six-hundred-plus thread count, but he'd die just the same. Death wouldn't forget about him.

He knocked on the door and waited, sliding his attention over to his beautiful wife who was shifting on her feet with intense anxiety. He stared at her like he always did. Like she was this drawing force that he felt compelled toward. It didn’t matter whether she was sobbing on the floor in a crumpled mess. Or complaining about life and her job until she was blue in the face. Or standing in front of him, like she was now, looking like she could rule the fucking universe. She was incredible. And every time he stared at her, she took his breath away. Not because of the way she looked but because of the way she held herself. Because even though he knew she was feeling insecure and anxiety-filled inside, she was trying her best to strut her stuff and be all that she could be and more. She was a warrior and she didn’t even know it.