Metafiction Quotes

Conchpore is real. It is as real as Malgudi, Brahmpur, Lilliput or Macondo. And also as real as San Francisco, Madurai, Edinburgh, Gaborone or Tokyo. You know that fictional towns exist. You visit them all the time.

Up near the top, underlined and in capitals were the words: 'READ THIS.' Jay grimaced as she wondered what she was in for. Would it be a semi-literate political rant, a half-baked conspiracy theory or a quasi-religious manifesto? Perhaps it was just a very long suicide note: a self-pitying list of misfortune and hardship. Whatever it was she doubted it would contain anything useful. Unable to put it off any longer, she finished her coffee and began: 'We are all stories that we tell ourselves, memories selected to fit our chosen form. What becomes of us when there is no-one there to read?

Every life is inexplicable, I kept telling myself. No matter how many facts are told, no matter how many details are given, the essential thing resists telling. To say that so and so was born here and went there, that he did this and did that, that he married this woman and had these children, that he lived, that he died, that he left behind these books or this battle or that bridge – none of that tells us very much.