Best 4069 quotes in «fiction quotes» category

It is not my job to explain the story or understand the story or reduce it to a phrase or offer it as being a story about any specific person, place, or thing. My job is to have been true enough to the world of my story that I was able to present it as a forceful and convincing drama. Every story is a kind of puzzle. Many have obvious solutions, and some have no solution at all. We write to present questions, sometimes complicated questions, not to offer easy or not-so-easy answers. Do not be misled by the limited vocabulary the American marketplace uses to describe the possibilities for story and drama. If we’re really writing we are exploring the unnamed emotional facets of the human heart. Not all emotions, not all states of mind have been named. Nor are all the names we have been given always accurate. The literary story is a story that deals with the complicated human heart with an honest tolerance for the ambiguity in which we live. No good guys, no bad guys, just guys: that is, people bearing up the crucible of their days and certainly not always—if ever—capable of articulating their condition.

It is not often that I have two options to choose from. It is nice to be compelled towards something, otherwise one drifts through life unimpeded. Bhanggi

It is not so much as to say that something has occured; but to describe the very essence of the occurance. One must take hold of his readers and pull them into his world...the world that he has penned, with the utmost care and attentiveness. And then, when the readers are fully submerged in this magnificently crafted place of wonder; they will see, and touch, and smell, and feel all the elements of the author's imagination.

It is not often that you see life and fiction take each other by the hand and dance.

It is said, once a wise man from the far North told me; it is said that there are in certain parts of Scandinavia cities within cities like there are circles within circles; existent yet invisible. And those cities are inhabited by creatures more terrible than imagination can create : man-shaped but man-devouring, as black and as silent as the night they prowl in.

It is only the sudden and unpredictable appearance of comets that spoils the immutable celestial sphere.

It is said that there is never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart. The shroud that covers this free spirit is woven by the complex threads of society.

It is one of the great blessings of youth, this guiltlessness, the source of gentle sleep and peaceful days.

It made a romantic tale. The young rouge, cheating death, returning to his grieving lover. But in reality? Ashyn had always known life did not resemble one of her book stories or Moria's bard tales, and yet there was a part of her that hoped it did. The more she saw, the more she realized she was wrong. People made up stories because that is what they wanted from their world. A place where goodness, kindness, and honor were rewarded. They were not rewarded. The people of Edgewood could attest to that. - Sea Of Shadows

IT IS SAID that time is unrelated to everything else. It goes on and on, unnoticing of our actions, our falls, our triumphs. Who’s to care then, if time does not remember us? It flies by, fleeting, inattentive and disinterested in any occupants of this earth. What are we, then, if time thinks so little of everyone it passes? Time is truly apathetic to the many to whom a little empathy would mean so much. ~April~ Disarming Reign of Blood

It is sometimes the minor, not the major, characters in a novel who hold the author's affection longest. It may be that one loses affection for the major characters because they suck off so much energy as one pushes them through their lives.

It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel.

It is you I foreknew and have predestined for such a time as this. Just as My heart has so eagerly chosen you, William Ore, you must also choose me.

It occurred to him that he had not spent his life as he should have done. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false.

It may be that the Chronicles of Narnia may outlive The Allegory of Love, and Perelandra outlive them both. Few works of learning and criticism survive a hundred years; what it was learned to know in 1950 will be expected of scholarship-candidates in 2000; new things will be discovered, old notions disproved, other critical values asserted; but a piece of genuine imagination in fiction may have a long life.

I told you; I am Arianna, the Siren, your Guardian, and how is a Guardian supposed to do her job if she is clueless about the Guardianee?

I took one of my hands in the other, tried to imagine what it would feel like if it was another person's hand holding mine. There have been times where I felt that I might die of loneliness.

I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee's life of the poet. She died young--alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the crossroads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh.

...I tried to pretend that what we were enacting was nothing more than an intricate kind of handshake." ~Malcolm

I transform fiction into memory.

I treated Art as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction.

It's 1am, I have fiction to write!

It's a good day to do great things!

It's April Fools, and the fool is me

I took on a year of reading books for a reason. Because words are witness to life: they record what has happened, and they make it all real. Words create the stories that become history and become unforgettable. Even fiction portrays truth: good fiction is truth.

It must have really not liked me, but I can't imagine why, don't say anything Amelia." Amelia shrugged her shoulders, "It liked me the first time." Otto smirked, "Well I have no idea why.

It's a true image, born of a false spectacle.

It’s a very private moment when your heart breaks. I was thankful we were alone. I knew I couldn’t keep her, but I would always do anything to protect her.

It's considered good sportsmanship not to pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.

It's better to lose some of battles in the struggle for your dreams than to be defeated without ever even knowing what you're fighting for.

It's best not to get settled on things being a certain way, I realized. Life had a funny way if interrupting your plans.

It’s complicated,” I said in defense, hands going up to show surrender. “Talk slowly,” Jenna retorted derisively. “Okay, I deserved that,” I admitted.

It's either true or it's not.

It seemed to us that the fantastic can be, can do, so much more than its detractors assume: it can illuminate the real, it can distort it, it can mask it, it can hide it. It can show you the world you know in a way that makes you realise you've never looked at it, not looked at it.

It's difficult to know when love blooms; suddenly one day you wake up and it's in full flower. It works the same way when it wilts—one day it is just too late.

It's easy to like someone from a distance. But when she stopped being this amazing attainable thing or whatever, and started being, like, just a regular girl with a weird relationship with food and frequent crankiness who's kinda bossy, then I had to basically start liking a whole different person.

It seems in the final analysis that people who get involved in religion are only after their own personal happiness.

It's fiction, the improbable is very probable in my worlds

It's from the newspapers that people I know - relatives and co-workers - have got the idea that crosswords are a prophylactic against Alzheimer's. Newspapers are of course also the place where crosswords (and now sudokus) are most readily available, so the association is presumably good for circulation.

It's never the deviants who are the problem, puss. Don't forget that. It's the people who won't open their minds that are dangerous.

It’s no surprise that small romances began to bubble up throughout the lab. At the time, it seemed to make sense. It wasn’t long before our working together in such close proximity, together with the general excitement of the task at hand, led to lingering glances over calorimeters, colleagues leaning in to share the dual eyepieces on comparison microscopes, the sudden, accidental brush of hands simultaneously attempting to adjust the needle valves of Bunsen burners. When we examined some of the pollen we found in Loeka’s colon, it turned out the cells within the pollen were still intact, which meant that Loeka’s death could be placed sometime during the spring. Spring!

It's not an easy thing to tell a true story.

It's just like an alcoholic to think he's doing the Zombie Apocalypse wrong.

It's odd to imagine, of course: you pass a car on a lonely rural highway; you sit beside a man in a diner and share views with him; you wait behind a customer checking into a motel, a friendly man with a winning smile and twinkling hazel eyes, who's happy to fill you in on his life's story and wants you to like him - odd to think this man is cruising around with a loaded pistol, making up his mind about which bank he'll soon rob.' - Richard Ford, Canada

It’s hard for me to talk about love,' she said. 'I think movies are the way I do that.

It's not just a novel idea, it's a novel.

It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word

It's one thing to leave. It's another to go.

It's only artists who know how to use their eyes

It's only fiction until it happens.