Fiction Quotes - Page 3

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies.

I am not as valuable as the books, I AM the books! They are a part of me I cannot delete or cut off or ignore! I AM CURRENCY! - Nevel Walker

My creativity keeps me from starving. Humanity keeps my life mundane. Loving secures my love for life, but my imagination keeps me sane.

Fiction writers, magicians, politicians and priests are the only people rewarded for entertaining us with their lies

The epiphany machine will not discover anything about you that you do not, in some way, already know. But think for a moment about surprise. What is surprising is never what is revealed but the grace with which it has been hidden.

Stanley forced a smile to his lips at the memory of the onesided romance; it was silly, after all, a stupid childhood crush. Who’d fall in love with a fictional character? That was the kind of thing you laughed about as an adult. Or at least Harriet had thought so. He couldn’t quite do it, though. Couldn’t quite see it as a joke. It had felt too real, too raw and wild and fierce, for him todismiss it even now. It was love, of a sort, stunted and unformed as it was. For a time, it had kept him sane.

Ridley nodded. 'She told me I couldn't ever tell General Harding or anybody else. Told me I wouldn't be safe.' 'Safe?' Uncle Bob stopped rocking and took the pipe from between his teeth. 'She started in talkin' 'bout you bein' safe, sir?' Ridley nodded again, and that's when Uncle Bob grinned. 'Well, shoot . . . you ain't lost her yet, sir. Not altogether, anyhow. Any female goes to talkin' 'bout you bein' safe . . . hmmph. There still be somethin' left in her heart for ya.

Just as terror, even in its pre-total, merely tyrannical form ruins all relationships between men, so the self-compulsion of ideological thinking ruins all relationships with reality. The preparation has succeeded when people have lost contact with their fellow men as well as the reality around them; for together with these contacts, men lose the capacity of both experience and thought. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.

All literature, highbrow or low, from the Aeneid onward, is fan fiction....Through parody and pastiche, allusion and homage, retelling and reimagining the stories that were told before us and that we have come of age loving--amateurs--we proceed, seeking out the blank places in the map that our favorite writers, in their greatness and negligence, have left for us, hoping to pass on to our own readers--should we be lucky enough to find any--some of the pleasure that we ourselves have taken in the stuff that we love: to get in on the game. All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.

Derailed. In exile. Deeply ashamed, despised. Yet she had so little pride, she was grateful most days simply to be alive.There is Minimalist art; there are minimalist lives.

Life’s unpredictable patterns had a strange way of forming a connected web.

My memories came back like a punch in the face. Only good.

Remember, any lie you are told, even deliberately, is often a more significant fact than a truth told in all sincerity.

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

The hamster-powered hat is the same as any other hat. It keeps your head warm and looks smart,” the inventor said. “The hamster generates heat by running on the wheel. If you get a big enough hamster, it will keep your whole face warm.

Sometimes I'll pick up the "heart of the jungle" fossil on my bookshelf, or pull out my old field notebooks from my desk drawer, warped by Amazonian rains and the river's steam, the scent of the jungle still on their pages. I do this to remind myself that fiction does not have a monopoly on the unbelievable.

I blinked at him just casually talking about my new sex life with his genie-shiny head, and I knew at any second I would break into hysterics.

The ‘fact’ of my actions frequently collide with the ‘fiction’ of my words. And at what point will I live what I say, so I will avoid what I do?

I am going to show you great and mighty things which no one has ever seen before.... I am going to take you places where no one has ever been. I am going to take you to heights where no one has ever reached. If you will only come to me with all your heart, I will do a mighty work in you, which no man can undo but yourself.

We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's version of the Kool-Aid jingle is at once chilling and evocative. Donny Osmond is brilliant as James Jones.

I do love you. I love you enough to accept who you are. Why can’t I received the same feeling in return?”-Ariel

Fiction may amuse us, but reality instills lessons to be imbibed through experience; to 'live' this stark reality called 'life' as a blessing, whereas some foolishly waste it by following fiction and fictitious characters.

How did you get so scratched up then, Emlynn?” He looked at me uncertainly again.I felt wildly like laughing. Too many swooping highs and plummeting lows. What a weird fewdays. Weird being a massive understatement.“Cr-Crawling through gorse bushes.” I took a perverse delight in answering his questions in a way that told him nothing at all. I’d never paid much attention to boys before. Maybe Grace was onto something after all.“Crawling through gorse,” he repeated. “Part of your action-girl antics, no doubt?”“N-no doubt.” I smirked again.

…My eyes were wet, tears waiting to drop from my eyes and heart started to sob. The words from Jiya pushed me on my back foot…”Source: 'The Unpredictable Heart - You may be a Victim

A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.

Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another.

Well, I didn't really know what to say. So maybe I should say that I have thought about you and I like you, I like seeing you, I care for you and maybe I love you too. And the next time if you tell me you love me, I'll--" She stopped."You'll what?""I'll say I love you too.

All kidding aside…” I focus back on Pyke, genuine sincerity in my tone.“Thank you…for everything. For dragging my ‘clueless ass’ through the ocean, andover hill and vale, when you knew it was futile and stupid—but that I’d still try to do it, with or without your help. Thanks for tracking me down when I was alone and helpless; and for giving me a voice when I thought all hope was lost—”“Ugh, for crying out loud…Enough already,” Pyke squirms, a nauseatedgrimace twisting his hairy face. “Now you’re going way overboard with thegratitude…That kind of gushy crap is meant to be dished out in small doses,” he gripes. “Please make it stop…before I have to snap my own neck, just to end the suffering.” He backs away into the crowd, giving Tristan’s shoulder one more slap with a sly wink. “Hurry up, Man, and do something. Kiss her, muzzle her…shove a sock in her mouth—

I often tell my students that fiction is about desire in one way or another. The older I get, the more I understand that life is generally the pursuit of desires. We want and want and oh how we want. We hunger.

The shadow of a character is defined by its maker...while a heroine is personified by its actions and relatability. So writers can create a world with a heroine that has impact and finish with everessence lights at the dims of its shadows

When strange objects shapes the landscape, we get fiction

Sex was the main component of her thoughts now. But love - and her desperate longing for it - had vanished from her heart like a migraine after a painkiller.

Regarding beliefs and belief systems: We argue what and how we feel, rather than what we - actually - know or assume to be facts or factual evidence. Thus, it is justifiably prudent to challenge that which has been adopted or enforced by tradition. If such examination is discouraged by fearful tactics - we must not shy away from soulful searching.

Most civilizations had more fiction than they did real history.

In the forest you may find yourself lost, without companions. You may come to a river which is not on a map. You may lose sight of your quarry, and forget why you are there. You may meet a dwarf, or the living Christ, or an old enemy of yours; or a new enemy, one you do not know until you see his face appear between the rustling leaves, and see the glint of his dagger. You may find a woman asleep in a bower of leaves. For a moment, before you don’t recognise her, you will think she is someone you know.

The difference between vampires and angels? Angels are real.

How talented was death. How many expressions and manipulations of hand, face, body, no two alike. They stood like the naked pipes of a vast derelict calliope, their mouths cut into frantic vents. And now the great hand of mania descended upon one hundred-throated, unending scream.

Cery: So, Hem, tell me why I shouldn't see how many holes I need to make before you start leaking money?

Alexier found that a dose of humility did wonders to one’s ability to grasp new ideas and, after all, it had been this very ability that made him the researcher he was today.

[…] there exists around the written world opened by the work a multitude of other possible worlds, which we can complete by means of our images and our words. Denying oneself this work of completion in the name of some hypothetical fidelity to the work is bound to fail: we can indeed reject filling these gaps in a conscious way, but we cannot prevent our unconscious from finishing the work, according to its priorities and those of the era in which it was written.

Quinn froze. There was nothing he could do now that would not be a mistake. Whatever choice he made--and he had to make a choice--would be arbitrary, a submission to chance. Uncertainty would haunt him to the end. At that moment, the two Stillmans started on their way again. The first turned right, the second turned left. Quin craved an amoeba's body, wanting to cut himself in half and run off in two directions at once. (Chapter 7)

Pastor McFucking Bride this . . . Pastor McFucking Bride that. Fuck him!

I have a tendency to break rules and shake things up. I would say that with me people never know what is real and what is fiction. And I like that because reality is relative.

What was the point of having a situation worthy of fiction if the protagonist didn't behave as he would have done in a book?

[M]ay not literature (and, in particular, fiction) be considered a desperate and permanently thwarted effort to produce a unique form of expression? Something like a cry, perhaps, a cry that, somehow, inexplicably contains all the millions of words that have ever existed, anywhere, in any age. In contrast with the spoken word and its classifying function, the purpose of writing seems, rather, to be a quest for the egg, the seed, nothing more.

Wolfman clears everything off the table except his gun. That he keeps close at hand. There is a sense of ceremony about his actions. My stomach tightens up. We are about to begin.

People are complicated. And messy. Seems too convenient that we’d all fit inside some multiple-choice question.

As in the universe every atom has an effect, however minuscule, on every other atom, so that to pinch the fabric of Time and Space at any point is to shake the whole length and breadth of it, so in fiction every element has effect on every other, so that to change a character's name from Jane to Cynthia is to make the fictional ground shudder under her feet.

The truth, as much as people acted like they wanted to hear it, was sometimes too cruel and harsh.

You've turned on us, New York. We who see your jagged-tooth skyline rise up and want to weep because we are so full of you. We who know that the tumbledown tenements are beautiful, that the cracked sidewalks are beautiful, that the iron and cobblestones, the soot and the stink are beautiful, that the tired old shoemakers are beautiful. That the bodega cats, the gutter rats, the endless clouds of pigeons are beautiful . . . We mourn for you, New York, because you are forgetting us, your brash and ragged children.

I hate you, Edgar. I hate you with all my heart.

After reading Burgum, [Patricia Highsmith] wrote in her cahier that, like Kafka, she felt she was a pessimist, unable to formulate a system in which an individual could believe in God, government or self. Again like Kafka, she looked into the great abyss which separated the spiritual and the material and saw the terrifying emptiness, the hollowness, at the heart of every man, a sense of alienation she felt compelled to explore in her fiction. As her next hero, she would take an architect, 'a young man whose authority is art and therefore himself,' who when he murders, 'feels no guilt or even fear when he thinks of legal retribution'. The more she read of Kafka the more she felt afraid as she came to realise, 'I am so similar to him.

I thought if only we could go onand meet again, shy as strangers.

Matt was almost completely naked. A tattered loincloth and an ugly chain with a yellow diamond were his only apparel.

There is absolutely everything in great fiction but a clear answer.

To be honest with you, I don't have the words to make you feel better, but I do have the arms to give you a hug, ears to listen to whatever you want to talk about, and I have a heart; a heart that's aching to see you smile again.lines from Love Vs Destiny...

Don't let the whys have it. Don't let them take advantage of you. They'll crush your heart and steal your peace and mess with your mind and wrap around you so tight you won't be able to breathe. Don't le the whys ruin your life, child. Every time they try to sneak up, push them aside and move forward.

Do you think we can be friends?” I asked.He stared up at the ceiling. “Probably not, but we can pretend.

While he sweated out a story she bled put a poem. (Dark City Lights)