Famous Quotes

Famous Quotes - Tags - Fiction

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... a novel survives because of its basic truthfulness, its having within it something general... More
... any fiction ... is bound to be transposed autobiography. More
... But all the feelings that evoke in us the joy or the misfortune of a real person are only... More
... fiction never exceeds the reach of the writer’s courage. More
... if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would... More
... in ordinary fiction, movies, etc. everything is smoothed out to seem plausible—villains... More
... into the novel goes such taste as I have for rational behaviour and social portraiture. The... More
... the main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life. More
... there is ... a big aspect of play in writing novels, and making the story more and more... More
... when I exclaim against novels, I mean when contrasted with those works which exercise the... More
A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist,... More
A good short story is a work of art which daunts us in proportion to its brevity.... No... More
A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images. More
A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is... More
A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is... More
All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual. More
All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them. More
All the scientists hope to do is describe the universe mathematically, predict it, and maybe... More
All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to children by the hands of storytellers and... More
Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any... More
Although the primitive in art may be both interesting and impressive, as portrayed in American... More
Assemble, first, all casual bits and scraps
That may shake down into a world... More
But I hate things all fiction ... there should always be some foundation of fact for the most... More
By its very nature, the novel indicates that we are becoming. There is no final solution. There... More
By measuring individual human worth, the novelist reveals the full enormity of the State’s... More
Democritus plucked his eye out because he could not look at a woman without thinking of her as a... More
Educating a son I should allow him no fairy tales and only a very few novels. This is to prevent... More
Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning. More
Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at... More
Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality.... More
Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures. More
Fierce war and faithful love,
And truth severe, by fairy fiction dressed. More
For a Jewish Puritan of the middle class, the novel is serious, the novel is work, the novel is... More
For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with... More
For one moment, just one moment, Fevvers suffered the worst crisis of her life: “Am I fact? Or... More
Greater than scene ... is situation. Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all of... More
He took up his pen, which seemed to parch like a martyr in his hand. He began to write,... More
He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her... More
Here is one of the fundamental defects of American fiction—perhaps the one character that sets... More
How easy it is to tell tales! More
I at least have so much to do in unravelling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven... More
I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility—I wish the... More
I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I’ll have used up all my... More
I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is... More
I have not much faith in women in fiction.... Women are so horribly subjective and they have such... More
I know not whether the remark is to our honour or otherwise, that lessons of wisdom have never... More
If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea. More
If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the... More
If there were genders to genres, fiction would be unquestionably feminine. More
If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There’s a tremendous corruptibility for... More
In trying to understand the appeal of best-sellers, it is well to remember that whistles can be... More
It is in this impossibility of attaining to a synthesis of the inner life and the outward that... More
It is nearly always the most improbable things that really come to pass. More
It is scarcely exaggeration to say that if one is not a little mad about Balzac at twenty, one... More
It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we... More
It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes... More
It was like taking a beloved person to the airport and returning to an empty house. I miss the... More
It’s with bad sentiments that one makes good novels. More
I’ve never been convinced that experience is linear, circular, or even random. It just is. I... More
Jesus of Nazareth could have chosen simply to express Himself in moral precepts; but like a great... More
Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot... More
Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty. More
My mother ... believed fiction gave one an unrealistic view of the world. Once she caught me... More
No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing. More
No one can write a best-seller by taking thought. The slightest touch of insincerity blurs its... More
No real “vital” character in fiction is altogether a conscious construction of the author. On... More
Novelists are perhaps the last people in the world to be entrusted with opinions. The nature of a... More
Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there... More
Novels are longer than life. More
Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top. More
Novels so often provide an anodyne and not an antidote, glide one into torpid slumbers instead of... More
Of an old King in a story
From the grey sea-folk I have heard,
Whose heart was no more... More
On the wings of fancy, gentle readers, bear yourselves into the mid-air, where by imagination you... More
One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the... More
Our assembly being now formed not by ourselves but by the goodwill and sprightly imagination of... More
Our interest’s on the dangerous edge of things.
The honest thief, the tender... More
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to... More
Philosophers multiply our general nouns and verbs; they give fresh sense to stale terms;... More
Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from... More
Possibly the Creator did not make the world chiefly for the purpose of providing studies for... More
Romances I ne’er read like those I have seen. More
Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would... More
Sigh then, or frown, but leave (as in despair)
Motive and end and moral in the air;
Nice... More
Since the fin has come a little early this siecle and anomie is all the rage, wry, dry tenderness... More
That author who draws a character, even though to common view incongruous in its parts, as the... More
The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not... More
The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where human... More
The blue we bathe in is the blue we breathe. The blue we breathe, I fear, is what we want from... More
The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then... More
The central problem of novel-writing is causality. More
The end of all stories, even if the writer forebears to mention it, is death, which is where time... More
The fire burns as the novel taught it how. More
The first sentence of every novel should be: “Trust me, this will take time but there is order... More
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means. More
The King [Charles II] after the Restoration accused the poet, Edmund Waller, of having made finer... More
The most striking fault in work by young or beginning novelists, submitted for criticism, is... More
The motives to actions and the inward turns of mind seem in our opinion more necessary to be... More
The narrative impulse is always with us; we couldn’t imagine ourselves through a day without it. More
The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down. More
The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting. More

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