Quotes about Fiction

Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is; so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be.

This book is fiction, but there is always a chance that such a work of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened.

We must remember that there is a great difference between a myth and a miracle. A myth is the idealization of a fact. A miracle is the counterfeit of a fact. There is the same difference between a myth and a miracle that there is between fiction and falsehood -- between poetry and perjury. Miracles belong to the far past and the far future. The little line of sand, called the present, between the seas, belongs to common sense to the natural.

We are what we pretend to be.

The trouble with fiction, said John Rivers, is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.

The trouble with fiction is that it makes too much sense, whereas reality never makes sense.

Stop telling such outlandish tales. Stop turning minnows into whales.

Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.

Sometimes I don't know whether Zelda and I are real or just characters in one of my novels.

I married the heroine of my stories.