Quotes about Fiction

It has been somewhere said by Johnson, that merely to invent a story is no small effort of the human understanding.

It's not science fiction; it's fact. It's not a script; it's Scripture. It's not an accident; it's a divine appointment. Can I make a simple observation? Notice who's next to you! What you think is a seat assignment might be a divine assignment. The person two inches away may change your destiny, or you might change theirs!

Those who say truth is stranger than fiction have wasted their time on poorly written fiction.

Lacking real compassion and charity for others, he would take pleasure in weeping and rejoicing with the fictional characters on the stage. His love was not real.

So fantasy was fine early on, and when I discovered science fiction, I was very happy with it, because my first interest in science fiction came with an interest in astronomy.

Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

Reporting the extreme things as if they were the average things will start you on the art of fiction.

Good fiction must be entertaining- but what makes fiction special- and True- is that the realness of a novel allows it to carry a larger message.

My faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened.

She'd noticed immediately that I understood the lure of a good story. Sometimes a world that doesn't exist is the only escape from the one that does.

Without desire how is it possible to make a story?

I soon developed myopia and a firm belief that people in books were not only more interesting but more real than people outside of books.