Fiction Quotes

"Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love."

"You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it."

"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense."

"When they reached the end of the room he stopped, and muttered some words she could not understand. She opened her eyes, and saw the wall slowly fading away like a mist, and a great black cavern in front of her. A bitter cold wind swept round them, and she felt something pulling at her dress. "Quick, quick," cried the Ghost, "or it will be too late," and, in a moment, the wainscoting had closed behind them, and the Tapestry Chamber was empty."

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't."

"One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed."

"I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe."

"It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense."

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."

"Truth is more of a stranger than fiction."

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

"A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction."

"Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures."

"Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, the superstitious atheist."

"The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction."

"But I hate things all fiction... there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric -- and pure invention is but the talent of a liar."

"One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life."

"At the time I was writing it, it started as my own memoirs but transformed into a piece of fiction. All the emotions are mine, the setting is mine, the house is mine. But the characters are a composite of my students' stories."

"Science fiction is no more written for scientists that ghost stories are written for ghosts."

"Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it."