Fiction Quotes - Page 10

Friendship is just love that has yet to sprout wings and take flight.

Riley Blackthorne - kicking hell's ass one demon at a time.

Idolatry happens when you worship or praise anything excessively to the point of causing you to believe it reigns supreme. All things on this earth are temporal, even your very own desires. Be careful that you do not create idols to worship.

She slapped him. Hard. "Tell me!" she screamed, "TELL ME!"."The truth is...I am a liar," Jack said quietly. "Don't be one with me," she sobbed, "it hurts." "The lies or the truth?" he asked.

Four years ago the clocks started turning back. I open my eyes and see nothing. I feel nothing below or above me. I feel the absence of things. The absence of my flesh, my bones, my body, my mind. All that is left is awareness. I see nothing but the absence of colour. It’s not a black darkness. It’s simply nothing. The interior of a black hole. I recall news of a black hole lingering along the edges of our solar system. All that time ago. Four years ago. When the clocks started turning back. I hear nothing. Until there is a something. A small thing. A voice. I listen. There are more voices. The sounds are human. How long has it been since I’ve heard a human? The sounds scratch along my now present attention. They carve into my hearing. They are horrid, wretched things. Voices screaming. Growing loud and desperate. How many voices? Billions. This is the birth of our species. We are born screaming. It’s all we know to do. We have screamed for eternity. Within this empty space.

Is where you're from the place you're leaving or where you have roots?

This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.

My eyes have always been advertisements for an early death.

There is quite enough sorrow and shame and suffering and baseness in real life and there is no need for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction. As Police Commissioner it was my duty to deal with all kinds of squalid misery and hideous and unspeakable infamy, and I should have been worse than a coward if I had shrunk from doing what was necessary; but there would have been no use whatever in my reading novels detailing all this misery and squalor and crime, or at least in reading them as a steady thing. Now and then there is a powerful but sad story which really is interesting and which really does good; but normally the books which do good and the books which healthy people find interesting are those which are not in the least of the sugar-candy variety, but which, while portraying foulness and suffering when they must be portrayed, yet have a joyous as well as a noble side.

I’m a little bit of a plot junkie. I like stakes in my books. Sometimes storytelling gets a bit of a bad rap. “Plot’s easy” or “there’s a higher art we are all aspiring to.” Yes, first and foremost we are all aspiring to that art but I also think it has to have a certain propulsiveness, a certain thing that’s keeping me turning the pages. No matter how great the voice is you will have problems in the plot that will enable somebody to put it down. There are too many things competing for everyone’s attention to allow anyone to put that book down. I don’t want the reviewer to put it down because they’ve got 50 galleys stacked up. I don’t want the reader to put it down.

Never give up! And write for yourself first and foremost.

It was always this way: The more people talked, the more they obscured. You didn't need to argue for the truth. You could see it.

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

She lifts her eyes, and there is Death in the corner, but not like a king with his iron crown, as the epics claimed. Why, it is a giant brush loaded with white paint. It descends upon her with gentle suddenness, obliterating the shape of the world.

He lived like a devil and died like a saint

We both must burn this midnight oil together. You’re just as new to me as I am you.” --Andrew

Hey now, wait a second. When will I see you again? You can’t leave a poor lad dangling like that!”His look of bewilderment made me bite my lip to keep from laughing.“Why would you w-want to?” The words were out before I could stop them. A rare occurrence for me. And now I seemed pathetically needy. Very attractive.“Because I love a pair of pretty green eyes.” He grinned.

Writing isn't black magic. You just have to come up with an idea...

The best love is the one that makes you a better person, without changing you into someone other than yourself

If you decide to war with us, you will fail and suffer an eternity of misery,” he informed, his tone steady and cold. “Is that explicit enough?”“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” I said cheerfully, getting in touch with my inner smartass.

It was dark, so I couldn't make out much of her face, but she had brilliant red hair, like honey and roses and the sun altogether.

I want art that makes the world seem more unreal. I want fiction that can crumble the world and build it back into something new.

I'm dangerous for you, Abby.

The very idea of a library for me is bound to my mother and father and includes the history of my own metamorphosis through books, fictions that are no less part of me than much of my own history.

For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed and intelligent men and women carry on today in their endeavor to make sure that the fires of this planet burn peaceably.

Living is not an art, but to write of life is. Life is a series of accidents and anticlimaxes, misremembered and misunderstood, with lessons only dimly learned. Life is disorganized, lacks shape, lacks story.

Books do pretend ...but squeezed in between is even more that is true—without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see?

I don't put much stock in remembering things. Being able to forget is a superior skill.

Fiction is just that–fiction. Yes, it is serious business, but it should also be taken for face value. It’s entertainment. It’s escapism. It’s 365 pages of relaxation.

My life is kinda like a story that if I told you about it, you probably wouldn't believe. It would seem like fiction. That's me.

Despite how lonely or broken down you might feel, we need you with us helping to make the world better, kinder and safer, especially for the little girls coming up.

Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.

Outside of the usual bar or nightclub, it's not every day that I get a drink bought for me-at least not by strangers and certainly not on a workday. On that Saturday, in September 2010, it was from three separate individuals.

Don't starve an instinct with a lie on, Never hit or deceive a wounded lion. He heals faster than you can imagine And hurts even more when in famine.

When strange objects shapes the landscape, we get fiction

It’d been a long time since they’d been together, but as close as they were physically, they’d never been so far apart in every other way.

Yeah, tell me I’m a bottle of single malt scotch, she thought. That’s the way to my heart.

Grandpa said that we could solve a lot of the world’s problems if we considered cats and dogs edible. Like the neighbor’s dog who goes to the bathroom in his flower garden. And know what else?

People go around mourning the death of God; it's the death of sssin that bothers me. Without ssin, people aren't people any more, they're just ssoul-less sheep.

You spill a lot of beans in historical fiction. Crime fiction is about spilling no beans at all. You spill the least beans you possibly can. So because I had already written historical fiction before I was really good at the spilling beans section, but the new skill I had to learn when I was writing Brighton Belle was difficult. I had to avoid the equivalent of shouting, "this character's a murderer! Look who did it!.

Elena gasped back, "I can touch the ground!""I can see you touching it!", Bonnie exclaimed with tears of joy.

It’s hard for me to talk about love,' she said. 'I think movies are the way I do that.

Conformity runs rampant through everyday life, and people want to read about characters that deviate from societal norms.

Be careful who you choose as your friends because their bad habits can become your bad habits. Choose wisely...we all have a choice in life.

I remember when I was twenty-five,� he said. “No client comes to you when you’re twenty-five. It’s like when you are looking for a doctor. You don’t want the new one that just graduated. You don’t want the very old one, the one shaking, the one twenty years past his prime. You want the seasoned one who has done it so many times he can do it in his sleep though. Same thing with attorneys.

That’s what it means to be out of your mind. To let yourself be carried away by a dream. To give it room, let it grow wild and thick, until it overruns you.

There is nothing more amazing than being with the one you love.

I had finally become aware of how much I was capable of, how little I had to lose, and how deep into Douglas's soft sand I had sunk. Magellan's letters, which Douglas had recited, had become part of my being. It was as if I was right there with Magellan, following every curve of his pen as he wrote down his words to his beloved ones confiding his secret. I had become the ink, and the tip was tattooing my path. I was going to follow his dream, but still, I wished I knew why.

You never give such relationships a thought, To give a thought, to take a thought is a function of dissociation, distance. You can't exercise memory until you've removed yourself from memory's source.

It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

Fiction just makes it all more interesting. Truth is so boring.

At the small table, sitting very upright, was one of the ugliest old ladies he had ever seen. It was an ugliness of distinction - it fascinated rather than repelled.

Dr. Jules Hilbert: Hell Harold, you could just eat nothing but pancakes if you wanted.Harold Crick: What is wrong with you? Hey, I don't want to eat nothing but pancakes, I want to live! I mean, who in their right mind in a choice between pancakes and living chooses pancakes?Dr. Jules Hilbert: Harold, if you pause to think, you'd realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led... and, of course, the quality of the pancakes.

No one asked your opinion O'Brien," the red-haired one snapped again."No one ever asks yours either, that doesn't seem to stop you from giving it," he countered.

If a woman were elected president, would our nation expect her husband to be the official White House host?

Aubrey, crouching on a nearby counter, watched me with squinty eyes, apparently pondering why anyone would willingly immerse themselves in water ever, let alone for extended periods of time.

I don't recall that when I was in high school or college, any novel was ever presented to me to study as a novel. In fact, I was well on the way to getting a Master's degree in English before I really knew what fiction was, and I doubt if I would ever have learned then, had I not been trying to write it. I believe that it's perfectly possible to run a course of academic degrees in English and to emerge a seemingly respectable Ph.D. and still not know how to read fiction.

If you're a ghost," he said, "we mean you no disrespect. And if you're not a ghost, tell me who you are-or you soon will be one

She’d felt it before, she felt it now: the pull to fall in with him, to fall into him, to lose her sense of self.

Being a single parent on a part-time basis is tricky to navigate. That is what a racing widow has to do.