Fiction Quotes - Page 39

I now understand that writing fiction was a seed planted in my soul, though I would not be ready to grow that seed for a long time.

In darkness there is death.

Fiction cannot betray the truth. Though it must try," Ernest Hemingway in "Blast".

We were like wanderers in a desert, blessed with a rare downpour, but unable to store the rain.

It was only much later that he was made flesh and blood [in the Gospels] on paper. Thus Christ was created as a literary creation.

Our friend Chewy doesn’t speak much, but he chews a lot of tobacco so we call him Chewbacco.

If everything comes in your way just the way you wanted them to ,then you're probably in the wrong lane.

I know everything must be a lie, but I believe it anyway.

You know, Dorothy, you can’t let people bring you down so easily or you’ll have your nose in the dirt for the rest of your life. From what I make of it, for every person with a good thought, there are about fifty who’d try to spoil it. We have to guard our good ideas, our happy thoughts, and fight for them. Because if we let those others snuff them out, well, we didn’t after all deserve them.

Shocked my old friend from China, Deja Vu, when I turned up at his door without notice.

They will try to ascribe a purpose to my death, as though it were a punishment, but don’t you do so, in order that I continue to live in all the shadows of your longing. I will always be in your sleep and your wakefulness. I will be with you praying, propitiating and yearning for you, in sadness, in sorrow, in dismay and in the most profound happiness.

One of my professors once told me that the last official act of the British monarchy was when Queen Victoria refused to sign a law that made same-sex acts illegal. It would have made me think more highly of her, except the reason she objected was because she didn’t believe women would do anything like that. Parliament rewrote the law so it was specific to men, and she signed it. A tribute to enlightenment, Queen Victoria was not. Neither, as I have observed before, are werewolf packs.

That's science fiction shit," "It's only fiction until science catches up.

There were problems with having a reputation like his. Folks either wanted your hide or wanted you to save theirs. There was never any happy, indifferent middle ground.

She hoped Alistair would prove to be more than she imagined. But, unfortunately, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that people weren’t what they once were.

Hagnon fixes a value to everything. It occurs to Alexander that the man would probably sell his mother for an obol and consider it a deal.

Sometimes he counts himself to sleep by imagining the miles between stars like the succession of footsteps cleaving him from his home, as if mastering the distance in thought might blunt the separation. But if a man cannot return to the place of his birth, then what is there to stay his restless feet? What center will hold him from wandering endlessly? It should not be so difficult, he thinks, to know one’s place in the order of things.

At length the grandeur of the mountains becomes monotonous; with familiarity, the landscape ceases to provoke awe and wonder and the traveller sees the alps with the indifferent eye of those who always live there.

Perhaps great fiction is in reality, deep hidden truths.

I started to drink heavily, comfortably caught in the tentacle-like clutches of alcohol.

That was a stupid idea I made up while drunk. Why did someone build that?

The most temptation I'd experienced had been with Tomas, the Senate's spy who had been feeding off me without permission, and Mircea, who was probably plotting some nefarious scheme. I have no taste in men.

A tightrope walker uncertain if he could make it to the other side probably would not. A race car driver wondering if he was taking a turn too fast was likely to lose control. If a man feared death, whether his own or the taking of another's, death would surely come calling.

Under fun’s new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don’t want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel. Fiction becomes a weird way to countenance yourself and to tell the truth instead of being a way to escape yourself or to present yourself in a way you figure you will be maximally likable. This process is complicated and confusing and scary, and also hard work, but it turns out to be the best fun there is.The fact that you can now sustain the fun of writing only by confronting the very same unfun parts of yourself you’d first used writing to avoid or disguise is another paradox, but this one isn’t any kind of bind at all. What it is is a gift, a kind of miracle, and compared to it the reward of strangers’ affection is as dust, lint.

Well, the only reason we’re friends is because you can rock a tweed suit,” she informed, tone mock serious. “So if you want to keep me around, I expect more tweed.

I didn’t even have a name for her, shade or human, but I didn’t need one to know her. (Eric)

I have been…To every depth of my heartTo every height of my mindTo every extent of my worldI see only one nameIt’s yours…

The book was blunt and had an honesty about it, whereas the movie was just a beautiful lie.

An eye for an eye my friend.

Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.And while we're on the subject, I'd like to say a few words about escapism. I hear the term bandied about as if it's a bad thing. As if "escapist" fiction is a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish and the deluded, and the only fiction that is worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader finds herself in.If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill, and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn't you take it? And escapist fiction is just that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control, are with people you want to be with(and books are real places, make no mistake about that); and more importantly, during your escape, books can also give you knowledge about the world and your predicament, give you weapons, give you armour: real things you can take back into your prison. Skills and knowledge and tools you can use to escape for real.As JRR Tolkien reminded us, the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers.

I write pre-apocalyptic fiction. In other words, I’m not interested in a future where everything is blown to hell, I’d rather write something that helps to prevent it from happening.

Ah, relationships. If he was lucky, Luke thought, he would never have another one.

People vote for whom they believe will be the best president and representative for our country. The First Lady is not on the ballot.

I try to be a good cop. I try to be a good little soldier and follow orders up to a point. But in the end I’m not really a cop, or a soldier. I am a legally sanctioned murderer. I am the Executioner.

Where are you taking me?” Andrew demanded, whirling on the Ferryman. His muscles tensed, hands curling in and out of fists.“To my master.” The voice was ghostly, whispers of black ash and death, words cold and detached.He had an idea who that was but asked anyway: “And who is your master?”No answer came.Andrew’s insatiable rage rose up and swallowed his grief like a yawning ocean mouth, the darkest depths surging to the surface to form a mighty tidal wave. He closed the distance and seized the Ferryman’s gaunt wrist. There was no substance, no life beneath the cloak. The Ferryman slowly turned his hooded head, and Andrew found himself looking into the black hole of a self-contained night. The olfactory of decay was a punch in the face. Andrew released the Ferryman’s wrist and hastily stepped back, rocking the boat as he put distance between him and the unnatural wind spilling from the gaping orifice. Andrew shivered, the tiny hairs on his neck saluting. The cloaked head faced forward again, and the wind died away.

Oh r-really? Do t-tell?” I quirked an eyebrow back at him.“Well, usually it’s best to take your shoes and socks off before you step in the stream, better balance on an uneven surface. Also, you avoid that unpleasant squelchy feeling when you wear the shoes againlater.” He paused, smirking. “Also, ifI was going to paddle barefoot “I was going to paddle barefoot upstream in Yorkshire, I’d wait until at least May before I tried it. But you go ahead, love. You’re clearly a Spartan lass.

I just prefer my fiction with more teeth.

Sometimes you wake up from a dream. Sometimes you wake up in a dream. And sometimes, every once in a while, you wake up in someone else's dream.

If you want to be a writer-- stop talking about it! Sit down and write. -Jackie Collins

I'm really not up for answering any questions that start with how, when, where, why or what.

... Within the mind, especially the mind under great stress... boundaries of space and time are meaningless, and the... interior self lives by other rules and in other dimensions.

The best part of being a nanny, Katya thought, was reading children’s books aloud to enraptured children like Tricia, for no one had read such books aloud to her when she’d been a little girl. There hadn’t been such books in the Spivak household on County Line Road, nor would there have been any time for such interludes.

I wasn't writing home. I wasn't writing a death letter, either. I was writing a death journal, a piece of fiction meant for my family and my fiancee, Sara.

If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead.

A person with autism lives in his own world, while a person with Asperger's lives in our world, in a way of his own choosing

Oh. C’mon, pretty girl. I like it when ya scream.” The leader breathed into my ear. I spat as good as I could on his hand. He jumped back glaring. I said, “Funny. You like it when I scream? Yet you cover my mouth!” I laughed then winced.

Other than along certain emotional tangents there was little in the book that felt as if it had actually been lived. It was a fiction produced by someone who knew only fictions, The Tempest as written by isolate Miranda, raised on the romances in her father's library.

The word "avant-garde," for example, despite its note of impartiality, generally serves to dismiss-as though by a shrug of the shoulders-any work that risks giving a bad conscience to the literature of mass consumption.

How can you be kissing at a time like this? Have you no respect for the dead?

There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself.

Shut the front door!” Jenna exclaimed.Andrew disappeared into the foyer, and when he returned, his eyebrows were furrowed in confusion. “The door is shut?

guilt to motherhood is like grapes to wine

The pursuit of truth, not of facts, is the business of fiction.

You were the sun, and I was crashing into you

Miniture protoplasm, the dirty little bastard!

If it is impossible let's do it because nothing is impossible, if you set your mind to it.

Some things are just like riding a bicycle; you jump on, pedal, and hope you don’t fall.

Do try The House by fresh new author, Susannah Mansfield, it's funny, sad and very different, you'll love the characters and the stories.

If upper management found out, they’d send you off to the Probing Department.

Smiling, I cut across the quadrangle toward the commons. I felt better about life than I had in a very long time. We could do this, Lissa and me. We could do this together.