Fiction Quotes - Page 36

For the girl without words, there is laughter for what is light, gesture for want, and tears for all that is dark. There is not much more. Names are nothing but extravagance.

Like most modern people, we no longer bothered to make the distinction between events in real life and the dramas of fictional worlds, and so the cliff-hanger that inevitably, reliably ended the hour held just as much or more importance to us as the newspaper that usually went from doorstep to garbage bin unread, and we speculated about the future lives of the characters that populated decayed mansions or desert isles as if they weren't inventions of other human minds.

It is one of the great blessings of youth, this guiltlessness, the source of gentle sleep and peaceful days.

Without making a conscious decision to do so, Drew grabbed a fistful of her ridiculous blond wig and tugged.Some of her hair came with it and he felt a moment of satisfaction when she howled. Bianca’s real hair was a matted mess against her head. He looked at the wig in his hand and moved his gaze to the water fountain.Bianca’s eyes widened. “Don’t do it. Don’t you dare.” “Don’t do what? Don’t do this?” He dangled the wig above the fountain.She raised her hands and crept toward him. “Just give it back, Drew, and we’ll be even. Okay?”“Aaawww, is Bianca getting worried? Poor baby.”“Come on.”“Say you’re sorry.” He shook it up and down.“What? No way.”With a shrug, he tossed the wig into the water fountain.

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.

Don't they understand what fiction is?

A dark shadow rose from the depth of the watercourse. Forced to crawl out of the oceans rolling waves, it struggled against the pull of the undertow. Rising, it moved further up the white sandy beach away from the cold water. The creature collapsed onto the cool sand as the crescent moon above shone on his sleek gray skin revealing two immense leather-like wings protruding from his back. Exhaustion clouded his mind. The darkness of night was soothing, refreshing. Somehow he knew it would bring him strength and sustenance. The creature watched as a great rolling storm cloud sunk into the salty water before him and he tried to remember why he had come.

Coincidence sometimes happens as in a fairy tale. Wong was in an emotional state of mind. Still smoking opium, he thought about Kwang’s long-dead father, who had arrived in Singapore from Amoy on the junk Nam Hong. The opium den now felt bare and lonely without all the old vibrations. It was also dark and damp and the small kerosene lamp was running low on fuel. Wong added more kerosene and mumbled to himself, “Tonight I am going to smoke my way to heaven!

I wanted to protect her, and, if I couldn’t do that, I’d at least be there for her. (Eric)

I’m an idiot for thinking that one performance would change anything.Maybe I should stop writing songs and start writing fiction.

Most people surrendered fairy tale hopes in exchange for cookie cutter lives

We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all a sham. We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. For us, such and such a planet is as arid as the Sahara, another as frozen as the North Pole, yet another as lush as the Amazon basin. We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don't want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, a civilization superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us - that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence - then we don't like it anymore.

My father was a patient father. He was so patient that when he once saw a sign that read ‘Patient Entrance’ at the Welt Foot Hospital, he drove his automobile incredibly slow.

Fiction in general holds little interest for me. Novels, in particular, arouse more suspicion than intrigue. It truly baffles me that any practitioner of make-believe should (especially in this day and age) feel the need to produce anything so gratuitous. The fact that certain examples of this fare can approach the length of your average dictionary seems inherently absurd.

He was having more fun than a barrelful of monkeys.**Several years earlier Spider had actually been tremendously disappointed by a barrelful of monkeys. It had done nothing he had considered particularly entertaining, apart from emit interesting noises, and eventually, once the noises had stopped and the monkeys were no longer doing anything at all—except possibly on an organic level—had needed to be disposed of in the dead of night.

William slapped him on the shoulder, sending Sex into rapturous convulsions. “Before we do this, I’ve got one question for you. And you can’t lie. This is too important.”A bit sick to his stomach at what such a debaucher could want to know, Paris cast his attention to the black-haired, blue-eyed he-devil. “Ask.”“Are you going to suggest I kiss you for good luck or strength or whatever it is your sex demon needs?”That earned the warrior a two-fingered salute.“So that’s a no?” William asked.Paris worked his jaw. “Here, let me help you off the cliff to the drawbridge.” With no more warning, he shoved William over the ledge. He thought he heard a fading, “ So not cool,” from the bastard as he fell…fell…Splat.

Hell, he now understood, went beyond simple torture. Hell inflicted agony with intermittent reprieves to maintain the hope of peace. Hell was not endless dark, but rare rays of sunlight to keep one’s eyes longing for their bright beauty. Hell forced hours of suffocation beneath the freezing water with times of release to keep one accustomed to the joy of breath, to let needful expectation be repeatedly stabbed by deprivation.

I knew from the moment I heard you, the moment I saw the gun and realized that this lovely, petit woman was the executioner, that you would never die waiting for me to save you - that you would save yourself.

The advice is a call to empathy, the ultimate act of the imagination, and the true ground of all fiction.

All who hear are called. All who are called are able.

Love"I'm in love with you," he said quietly."Augustus,"I said."I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.""Augustus," I said again, not knowing what else to say. It felt like everything was rising up in me, like I was drowning in this weirdly painful joy, but I couldn't say it back. I couldn't say anything back. I just looked at him and let him look at me until he nodded, lips pursed, and turned away, placing the side of his head against the window.

The other one was filled with loud and obnoxious tourists. Always boasting on winning a sand castle competition and seeing who could get tanned first. What a whacky bunch of people.

Sometimes you have to let go a little bit and travel the path of least resistance but this doesn’t mean that you quit when things get tough, as you are working towards a goal! It just means that you may only be able to see a rough draft of your final destination, right now, and that it’s safe to explore along the way.

Picture this broad: 22 going on 18. Half the guys in my class would have given their left testicle to date her. This cupcake is the guidance counselor the principal has assigned me. Miss Boyle is her name. We all call her “Miss Bubbly Water.” Imagine the teasing I have to endure from my friends. Not to mention what it’s like, sitting across from this Barbie Doll every Thursday afternoon, watching her cross and uncross her legs, while she’s lecturing me about—get this: “staying focused.” Right! My pants are on fire, and she’s handing me a crash course in Psych 101!

Joseph, you’re out of clean towels.” Lucia poked her head into the living room, the rest of her hidden behind the wall. Her red hair dripped water onto my wooden floors.“She’s in the buff.” Jenna guffawed. Gabriella rolled her eyes, beaming.I rose. “Go back to the bathroom. I’ll bring you a towel,” I ordered Lucia. She disappeared down the hall.“You have naked angels running around your house,” Jenna continued through her laughter. Gabby laughed louder.

We want to believe that this life is longer than it is, but in the grand scheme of the universe our existence equals the amount of time it takes a warm breeze to blow through your hair on a spring day.

Love, it is said, is blind, but love is not blind. It is an extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy of regard. To see the best is to see most clearly, and it is the lover's privilege.

Louis-Cesare slowly pulled himself into a half-standing position against the side of the winery.'What? Did you think one little mage was going to do me in?' He swallowed hard. 'Hell, that was just a warm-up.

Have you lost your mind? What have I told you Charlie about whales? You can’t MANHANDLE THEM!

If he's like any other man I've ever met, it's not my smile he's going to be looking at.

…progress isn't necessarily about change but about things turning out as we want them to

I have often wondered, Sir, [. . .] to observe so few Instances of Charity among Mankind; for tho' the Goodness of a Man's Heart did not incline him to relieve the Distresses of his Fellow-Creatures, methinks the Desire of Honour should move him to it. What inspires a Man to build fine Houses, to purchase fine Furniture, Pictures, Clothes, and other things at a great Expence, but an Ambition to be respected more than other People? Now would not one great Act of Charity, one Instance of redeeming a poor Family from all the Miseries of Poverty, restoring an unfortunate Tradesman by a Sum of Money to the means of procuring a Livelihood by his Industry, discharging an undone Debtor from his Debts or a Goal, or any such Example of Goodness, create a Man more Honour and Respect than he could acquire by the finest House, Furniture, Pictures or Clothes that were ever beheld? For not only the Object himself who was thus relieved, but all who heard the Name of such a Person must, I imagine, reverence him infinitely more than the Possessor of all those other things: which when we so admire, we rather praise the Builder, the Workman, the Painter, the Laceman, the Taylor, and the rest, by whose Ingenuity they are produced, than the Person who by his Money makes them his own.

The more I learn about life and people, the more I realise that everyone has a story and everyone’s story is the biggest in their own mind.” - Laylla Jonson

What is it with Dictators and Writers, anyway? Since before the infamous Caesar-Ovid war they've had beef. Like the Fantastic Four and Galactus, like the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, like the Teen Titans and Deathstroke, Foreman and Ali, Morrison and Crouch, Sammy and Sergio, they seemed destined to be eternally linked in the Halls of Battle. Rushdie claims that tyrants and scribblers are natural antagonists, but I think that's too simple; it lets writers off pretty easy. Dictators, in my opinion, just know competition when they see it. Same with writers. Like, after all, recognizes like.

Are you looking for something real in this world of illusions? Call me. Casual Flings need not apply. I am looking for Love.

Underwater, bubbles erupted before my eyes as a swift hand snatched my arm and pulled me to the surface. I gasped for air, coughing and gagging at the amount of water I sucked into my lungs by pure shock. What was up with me and breathing in water? I needed to grow some gills or something.

Help me out,” I pleaded. “You’ve left me alone to deal with this situation, and now we’re being dealt the consequences.”I swore I heard Tom growl. I actually pulled the phone from my ear to stare at it to make sure it hadn’t turned into a tiny lion.

His life seemed like a deck of cards, and in the midst of all those two’s and three’s someone had thrown him an Ace and a King, but they were still different suits. He didn’t know what to discard or what to keep, and he was scared to death to lay them down.

It was unfair that people could pretend to be one thing when they were really something else. That they would get you on their side and then do nothing but fail, and fail, and fail again. People should come with warnings, like cigarette packs: involvement would kill you over time.

There are some wounds unreachable by words, some sins immune to apology.

It's a tough world to find yourself in, but an even tougher one to be yourself in

Let’s de-bunk some of this, shall we? Myth 1– Kings and Queens are divine beings – rubbish. Kings and queens of old were murdering bastards who ruled with a rod of iron. Myth 2 – the rich prosper out of godliness – more rubbish. They gained their wealth by royal patronage and taxing and stealing from the masses. Myth 3 - the poor are poor because they’re depraved – yet more rubbish. They’re poor because of their naivety and childlike belief in, oh yes, Kings and Queens, the Church and the order of things. Finally, Myth 4 - women are evil and deliberately seductive – the biggest nonsense of all. Women are sexually attractive to men because they are the opposite sex to men; it’s not hard to see, is it? It’s the same for every species on the planet, you can see it in any mating ritual on the Discovery channel but this truth has been reversed and buried under the eternal lie fostered upon us by the church. That’s what the bible has achieved and that’s why our society is divided and divided again. That’s why we are never working as one, because religion was designed to divide and rule the masses,” she broke off and looked deliberately round the room, “but the big question is, for what purpose and by whom?

People say I talk slowly. I talk in a way sometimes called laconic. The phone rings, I answer, and people ask if they’ve woken me up. I lose my way in the middle of sentences, leaving people hanging for minutes. I have no control over it. I’ll be talking, and will be interested in what I’m saying, but then someone—I’m convinced this what happens—someone—and I wish I knew who, because I would have words for this person—for a short time, borrows my head. Like a battery is borrowed from a calculator to power a remote control, someone, always, is borrowing my head.

There is no society that does not highly value fictional storytelling. Ever.

I could have drowned…and my brother didn’t even care.

These short stories are vast structures existing mostly in the subconscious of our cultural history. They will live with the reader long after the words have been translated into ideas and dreams. That's because a good short story crosses the borders of our nations and our prejudices and our beliefs. A good short story asks a question that can't be answered in simple terms. And even if we come up with some understanding, years later, while glancing out of a window, the story still has the potential to return, to alter right there in our mind and change everything.

Is the writer cruel that makes his characters suffer only to bring them to triumph or tragedy in the end?

In relationship there are always two types of person: one weaker and the other stronger one. It's never easier to live being as weaker one!

I would not have majored in English and gone on to teach literature had I not been able to construct a counterargument about the truthfulness of fiction; still, as writers turn away from the industrious villages of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, I learn less and less from them that helps me to ponder my life. In time, I found myself agreeing with the course evaluations written by my testier freshman students:'All the literature we read this term was depressing.' How naive. How sane.

...he had a way of taking your hand which made it clear he'd have to be the one to let go."From Alice Hoffman's "Local Girls", pg.102.

No–one believes they’re a hero. But that doesn’t mean they’re not heroic - Captain Spectre.

The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.

The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed for ever on her bosom.

Beneath Albright’s office, the colliery sprawled across the hillside, red brick buildings scattered as though hurled from a great height, a hotchpotch of mismatched structures spattered on the valley floor. At the bottom stood the winding house, wheels motionless, above it, the engineering sheds and workshops, canteen and bath house. All lay empty. No buzz and hum of machinery. No voices raised in laughter or dispute. Gwyn found it unsettling: his lads had been out a month and a half and already the power had drained from the place. In the stillness, he caught the echo of footsteps. The crunch of boots on gravel. Generations of long-gone Pritchards clocking in and out. He was bound to Blackthorn by the coal that clogged his veins and by a bond of duty. The strike left him as diminished as his pit, day dragging after idle day.

It was the yearning she related to. Shriver seemed to understand the specific human pain of wanting and pushing away at the same time. It left her with a gorgeous ache, and when she turned the last page of the book and closed the cover, Norah's connection to the writer felt absolute. It was a breathless, consuming rapture....

She looked at me like I was stupid, the same look the girls in JC used to give me when I hadn’t heard of the latest boy band, or turned up at Zouk wearing unfashionable clothes.

I've learned that the most unbelievable is the most believable.

Great fiction is the art of a soul.

I am a politician which means I am a liar and a crook. When I am not kissing babies I am stealing their lollypops.

If all that one sees is a tiny speck of perspective in the larger scheme of things. And each perspective is made alive by the amalgamation of learning. And learning is a mere accumulation of skill and knowledge : both deriving from Truth. And Truth is not absolute but more of a figment of one's imagination made apparent to the senses. Then all, or for the most part, is fiction.