Fiction Quotes

There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.

Neil Gaiman

She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth.

Henry James

His allure, as he stood there, his face, even with the red swollen eyes, everything about him was gorgeous.

Maryam Schonbeck

Science Fiction Double Feature. Doctor X will build a creature.

Richard O'Brien

If I were a character in one of my books, I'd be the optimistic one, believing the best and urging others to do the same.

Stacy Hawkins Adams

And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.

Virginia Woolf

Galinda didn't see the verdant world through the glass of the carriage; she saw her own reflection instead. She had the nearsightedness of youth. She reasoned that because she was beautiful she was significant, though what she signified, and to whom, was not clear yet...She was, after all, on her way to Shiz because she was smart. But there was more than one way to be smart.

Gregory Maguire

Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.

Virginia Woolf

Try to find pleasure in the speed that you're not used to. Changing the way you do routine things allows a new person to grow inside of you. But when all is said and done, you're the one who must decide how you handle it.

Paulo Coelho

Tis strange,-but true; for truth is always strange;Stranger than fiction: if it could be told,How much would novels gain by the exchange!How differently the world would men behold!

George Gordon Byron

Neither novels or their readers benefit from any attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.

John Green

You know I love you,' said the other mother flatly.'You have a very funny way of showing it,' said Coraline.

Neil Gaiman

If she spoke, she would tell him the truth: she was not okay at all, but horribly empty, now that she knew what it was like to be filled.

Jodi Picoult

All our ancient history, as one of our wits remarked, is no more than accepted fiction.

Voltaire

The black bird cocked its head to one side, and then said, in a voice like stones being struck, 'You shadow man.'I'm Shadow,' said Shadow. The bird hopped up onto the fawn's rump, raised its head, ruffled its crown and neck feathers. It was enormous and its eyes were black beads. There was something intimidating about a bird that size, this close.Says he will see you in Kay-ro.' tokked the raven. Shadow wondered which of Odin's ravens this was: Huginn or Munnin, Memory or Thought.Kay-ro?' he asked.In Egypt.'How am I going to go to Egypt?'Follow Mississippi. Go south. Find Jackal.'Look,' said Shadow, 'I don't want to seem like I'm-- Jesus, look...' he paused. Regrouped. He was cold, standing in a wood, talking to a big black bird who was currently brunching on Bambi. 'Okay. What I'm trying to say is I don't want mysteries.'Mysteries,' agreed the bird helpfully.What I want is explanations. Jackal in Kay-ro. This does not help me. It's a line from a bad spy thriller.

Neil Gaiman

Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.

Oscar Wilde

Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognised: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.

Victor Hugo

I have seen many cases like N. during the five years I've been in practice. I sometimes picture these unfortunates as men and women being pecked to death by predatory birds. The birds are invisible - at least until a psychiatrist who is good, or lucky, or both, sprays them with his version of Luminol and shines the right light on them - but they are nevertheless very real. The wonder is that so many OCDs manage to live productive lives, just the same. They work, they eat (often not enough or too much, it's true), they go to movies, they make love to their girlfriends and boyfriends, their wives and husbands . . . and all the time those birds are there, clinging to them and pecking away little bits of flesh.

Stephen King

Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors--we hope--of your life come from reading fiction.

Orson Scott Card

One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. The tale is the map that is the territory.You must remember this.

Neil Gaiman