Literary Fiction Quotes - Page 2

The expected battle hadn’t taken place, yet something else had. Images of the entertainment which had just gone down were already coming back into Rat’s head. It had been wonderful to watch, unbelievably wonderful, the enactment of several plays at once on a single stage, and Rat was sorry it was over, but in a way it was even better to relive it now in the privacy of his mind. He hadn’t believed the boy-doctor and that stuff about the condom being used or warm, but he had gone along with it and the emotion which it powered. Everybody had. The emotion was the most important thing. He wondered how he could ever put such a chaotic, hilarious, sad thing down on paper, organise it into scenes or verses and fix his own pewiod at the end. He could never do it justice. He would never get that emotion back.

After all, she knows how painful it can be not to follow your heart and she knows about the obstacles and about loyalty and duty and about the countless kinds of love. If only Eve and Myles were freer to make the right choices, she thinks.

Over the years Breece had lectured that truth was liquid. That it evaporated in the heat of passion, froze in the cold of fear, and bent itself around virginous, unpurposeful fibs. It could churn and pull you under, drown you in itself, or let you ride upon it like a surf. But truth was always relfective. It showed blackheads and blemishes, fat rolls and sags, scabs and scars. Truth was fearful, angry and dangerous, and that was why so many people did their utmost to avoid it.

Largely, now, it was not anger he felt, but rather a kind of bone-scraping, quiet, ever-present sorrow. To come to the place that was supposed to stay the same, to come and find it changed. Dr. Miller had warned him against what he called the 'geographic cure.' You can't fix yourself by going somewhere else, he'd said. You'll always take yourself along.

She said, "Well, that's right, she's going to heaven very soon. And now it's time for us to say good-bye to her and tell her how much we love her."Mary martha nodded and looked at the needlepoint in her hands."Will her brain still be hurt, in heaven?" she asked.[Rebecca]....said, "Do you remember that time at the beach, when you went into the water with Gran-Gran and the waves were too big and she lifted you up over them? And you two were laughing so much and you said she was the coolest grandmother in the world?"Mary Martha smiled. "Yes""That is how she will be in heaven," Rebecca said.

One way to think about your life is as an extended free fall. An epiphany may help you see better as you fall. Rather than a meaningless blur, you will see rocks and trees and lizards. An epiphany is not a parachute.

For some reason, notwithstanding the alienation and utter rejection, I consider myself a global citizen. They say misery calls for company and I’ve always been a man of funerals. The companion of the misfortunate, until they are not!

The problem with a lot of people who read only literary fiction is that they assume fantasy is just books about orcs and goblins and dragons and wizards and bullshit. And to be fair, a lot of fantasy is about that stuff.The problem with people in fantasy is they believe that literary fiction is just stories about a guy drinking tea and staring out the window at the rain while he thinks about his mother. And the truth is a lot of literary fiction is just that. Like, kind of pointless, angsty, emo, masturbatory bullshit.However, we should not be judged by our lowest common denominators. And also you should not fall prey to the fallacious thinking that literary fiction is literary and all other genres are genre. Literary fiction is a genre, and I will fight to the death anyone who denies this very self-evident truth.So, is there a lot of fantasy that is raw shit out there? Absolutely, absolutely, it’s popcorn reading at best. But you can’t deny that a lot of lit fic is also shit. 85% of everything in the world is shit. We judge by the best. And there is some truly excellent fantasy out there. For example, Midsummer Night’s Dream; Hamlet with the ghost; Macbeth, ghosts and witches; I’m also fond of the Odyessey; Most of the Pentateuch in the Old Testament, Gargantua and Pantagruel.Honestly, fantasy existed before lit fic, and if you deny those roots you’re pruning yourself so closely that you can’t help but wither and die.

I’ve been told that I cannot change shit, so I might as well stop torturing myself. My emotions are ridiculed and branded as childish. I have been told that the world has given up on my people. I have been told, and realise that on many occasions, I myself am viewed as an outcast by some of those suffering. I’ve been confronted and my answer is always the same: I care even in my most fucked-up moments. I care even when gates of shit pour open to drown me; I care because I am a citizen of the world.

I came to the party with the sole purpose of getting completely shit-faced, to be perfectly honest. That was it, that was The Plan from the very beginning. I wanted more than anything that ever regrettable, forgetting-everything-you-learned-as-a-toddler kind of wasted that only either the completely stupid venture into or the complete novice (given how naive I was I think I fall more into the latter category). It was a very simple plan, but I like to think the simplest ones tend to be the most effective. The Plan sure as hell didn't involve everything else that happened that night, as all of that occurred quite naturally on its own.

Stallions," Frank said, "they're fightin' over a girl. - DANIEL'S ESPERANZA

I left Hairball to his manic mantric singing. I walked toward the house and stopped to rub some white pine needles on my fingers. The evergreen smelled fresh and alive. The needles were long and soft to the touch. I looked back at Hairball. The moon had risen higher and Little Meadow was even brighter. The windpicked up Hairball’s singing and blew it away. By the time I got up to the house he had become a silvery ghost dancing in the moonlight, a nowhere man longing to live on the moon.

You are there and to their ears, being a Syrian sounds like you’re unclean, shameful, indecent; it’s like you owe the world an apology for your very existence.

Her entire life, she’d been told sin was wrong, a black and white interpretation of what is evil and what is holy in the world—colored like a priest’s robe and collar—but she never believed it to be true. Sin was colorful: scarlet like rose blood, azure like skin deprived oxygen, violet as bruises, jade as rot; a colorful contradiction to the darkness and blinding light all are taught sin and holiness to be.

All that is gold does not glitter.Not all those who wander are lost:The old that is strong does not wither.Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

Kiana loved birds," Breena told him late one dusky evening. "When she was just a few summers old, she would run beneath them as they flew, her chubby arms stretched out as if tmo take flight alongside them." She sniffed and wrapped her arms around her stomach. "A few weeks before the attack, she told me that she was still going to fly one day. 'I look at the birds, and I see freedom,' she said. 'To soar above the hurt of the world, to be too high for the wars of men to touch you: that is what it means to fly.

He looked along the line of children, exhibits A to C of his existence and heirs to the twisted throne of his corrupt genetics.

We all have a book in us. The first step is recognising this. Writing it is a whole new journey.

I have to stress that my duties towards victims of all sorts, be it helping, taking their side, or caring, ends the moment their status becomes a bargaining chip. The moment the victim becomes a righteous sufferer. For in my short time on this planet, history and on-going affairs are full of those competing in victimhood.

I am not an atheist preacher. I am not an absolutist or chauvinist whose ways are immune to evolution. My core philosophy is that I might be wrong.

The emotion was the most important thing.

As a citizen of the world, it’s my instinct to keep the fallen and the suffering in my thoughts... You see, in my mind there is logic to it: do no harm, prevent harm, help, support, care for the harmed, face the harmer. My stupid idealist conscience considers sympathy, not pity, at its worst, the most basic and the least negotiable civil duty. Of course as a citizen of the world, I should strive to do more. That said, I am only a man and so I often do the least.

THE NEXT DAY WAS RAIN-SOAKED and smelled of thick sweet caramel, warm coconut and ginger. A nearby bakery fanned its daily offerings. A lapis lazuli sky was blanketed by gunmetal gray clouds as it wept crocodile tears across the parched Los Angeles landscape.When Ivy was a child and she overheard adults talking about their break-ups, in her young feeble-formed mind, she imagined it in the most literal of essences. She once heard her mother speaking of her break up with an emotionally unavailable man.She said they broke up on 69th Street. Ivy visualized her mother and that man breaking into countless fragments, like a spilled box of jigsaw pieces. And she imagined them shattered in broken shards, being blown down the pavement of 69th Street.For some reason, on the drive home from Marcel’s apartment that next morning, all Ivy could think about was her mother and that faceless man in broken pieces, perhaps some aspects of them still stuck in cracks and crevices of the sidewalk, mistaken as grit.She couldn’t get the image of Marcel having his seizure out of her mind. It left a burning sensation in the center of her chest. An incessant flame torched her lungs, chest, and even the back door of her tongue. Witnessing someone you cared about experiencing a seizure was one of those things that scribed itself indelibly on the canvas of your mind. It was gut-wrenching. Graphic and out-of-body, it was the stuff that post traumatic stress syndrome was made of.

Maybe that’s why I was so afraid of Sasha’s love. With him comes the remembering part that I was so good at forgetting.~Piper - 'Breathe Me

As people's hopes soared, Jana felt a tinge of fear.

We lie on the blanket, our bare bodies basking in the sun like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Only our apples were bitten a long time ago, and we ate them too.

For his lunch break, Alex decided to sit outside for a smoke. There was no break room to speak of, just a backdoor that led to a neglected parking lot and an old payphone. There was an upturned crate by the door used to hold the door open or to sit on if one so desired. But Alex couldn't sit down, even though he had been standing for the past four hours, his anxious mind kept his feet moving.He paced back and forth, smoking his cigarette with the speed of an anxious drug addict. The cool but faint breeze pushed the smoke away from him and dissipated it into nothing. He still felt angry about the run-in with Gonzalez. It had consistently poked at him like a curious sadist with a pointed stick ever since he walked away from the door slammed in his face.

What do you think about America?""Everyone always smiles so big! Well—most people. Maybe not so much you. I think it looks stupid.

Question: You’re 21-years-old, a young adult writing mature adult literary fiction. Imaj: Yes, I feel creativity is an ageless thing.

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.

As the sun went down outside, the television screen started completely lighting up the room in obnoxiously bright colors at hyperactive speeds. The conversation had been slowly rising in volume and frequency, as everyone started becoming more delinquent and the social boundaries slowly wore away. I don't remember what any of them said because I wasn't honestly paying any attention. I was focusing on my own misery and trying to numb the inner demons, the ugly things Thomas claimed came from the Outside World. Yet, to me, it wasn't outside, but rather INSIDE, as in my own head. I kept hearing Charley's voice from bits and pieces of conversations we had, laughter that I'll never hear ever again.

Olga was better, in the sun, where he could see every pore in her skin. Get closer. Feel her next to him. It was all he wanted in the world. It was the last thing in the world that he could do.

What had those vile creatures unleashed in me? What beast had they awakened? I think I vowed to kill the beast and bury it so deep in the abyss it would never again rear its ugly head. Part of me did make this promise. The other part embraced an unfolding of life’s inextinguishable flames and the mind’s unspoken bondage.As far as reinforcing the strength of my mind’s resolve, I supposed my body was a useless entity. Rather, it was this fancy thing I lived in—a mausoleum that beckoned the living, promising gratification, refuge, solace, peace, even immortality. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t mine. I realized then, it had never belonged to me. I could control what happened to it only if people were merciful. Watching Valentin was not merciful. It was a torturous joy.

Thomas tilted his head towards me. "Don't mind him, he's drunk.""Does he work for you?" I asked him. "Who, Rick? No no no. Really though, he's a fine gentleman, if you speak to him while you're heavily intoxicated. You have to be brought down to HIS level of intelligence in order to properly communicate with him, you see." Thomas said.

School children, who have enjoyed reading a romance or a detective thriller or a novel about terror and conquest, make the invariable mistake of studying literature in the college. They make the mistake of learning theory in place of art; they acquire impediments in their own enjoyment of the books by allowing a set of theories to govern their own reading.

The lines in the corners of her eyes spoke of years of wisdom, as a tree with the number of rings increasing with each passing year. She was a small frame of a woman with piercing eyes that suggested that they knew you, understood you even.

The blind faith in some half-assed conspiracy theories lines up with the logic of having to believe in something with no questions asked. It gives us peace and comfort. As simple as I was, I found that resorting to this absolute nonsense was the root of all our problems. It was a road of willingly-learned helplessness, for no action could make a difference, thereby no action was needed.

Join us. Play the game. It will bring you an untold number of rewards and you will finally have some direction and purpose in your lives. Take control of yourselves and those around you. Bend them to your will and all worldly pleasures will be yours...

In the mantra of shared hatred and placing the blame on Israel, our cowardice to face the barbarity of our heads of states was replaced with a divine purpose. Contemplating the manifestation of the eradication of hatred I often concluded, the entirety of the Middle East’s theocracies and dictatorships would be replaced by total anarchy. We would be left with nothing, as our brotherhood of hatred was the only bond known to us. Enculturated in the malarkey of that demagoguery, forces beyond our control and comprehension seem to deceive us into a less harmful and satisfactory logic as opposed to placing some blame on ourselves and thus, having to act to reverse that state of affairs.

Mr Martinek turned back to Jana. 'Thirty-eight per cent alcohol, sixty-two per cent fire - all the way from Karlovy Vary.

I don’t like coming over here at night, the girl said. The bayou is scary in the dark, all manner of things running wild out there.

Church words are easy to say, but they're not so easy to live by.

It's amazing how close I have been, all this time, to my old life. And yet the distance that divides me from it is vast.

The slick concrete reflected the facades of the work weary - grey, cracked and old,but more importantly, trodden upon.

The things white men failed to notice would fill the world they had ruined ten thousand times over.

I’m looking for the exit.”“The Last Exit to Brooklyn, will it be?”“Er, no! Just the way out.”From "One man in his time

We sat still, our breathing loud and rhythmic, its music melancholy, a traditional song of sorrow.

Bah! You want to hear the vilest thing a man’s done and you want him to be a hero at the same time!

Some people say he engineered his own arrest to gain an insight into modern methods of policing for a thriller he had planned. But you know what happens to artistic rats in prison: they have their rectums stretched, and not by overindulgence in Michelin-star food; they have their columns examined, and not by internet humorists or a qualified medical practitioner. I’m sure Rat knew this, too. Although he likes to accumulate a wide general knowledge, he would rather have a narrow rectum. A colon comes in handy here, before examples: two dots on top of one other, like the cowboys who copulate on Brokeback Mountain, on a slope so far away you need binoculars to see them properly. In prison there are too many insights and examples. Rat would never risk it.

The world is indeed a cold, hard stone.

One likes to think that there is some fantastic limbo for the children of imagination, some strange, impossible place where the beaux of Fielding may still make love to the belles of Richardson, where Scott’s heroes still may strut, Dickens’s delightful Cockneys still raise a laugh, and Thackeray’s worldlings continue to carry on their reprehensible careers. Perhaps in some humble corner of such a Valhalla, Sherlock and his Watson may for a time find a place, while some more astute sleuth with some even less astute comrade may fill the stage which they have vacated.

Here's to the future, he said and lifted the glass to his mouth. There was a lump of regret stuck in his throat as he spoke the words, but he washed it down with the whiskey.

Write for joy. It is the *only* reason to write. Whatever happens to your books afterward, just write for joy. Send your current one out when it's done and forget it, start another, and keep on writing for joy. Words I now live by. Welwyn Wilton Katz

I was an unwilling passenger leaving the Big Country. I would miss the mountains and the waterfalls,the treks on broad horses' backs to hidden villages in secret valleys.

It's no such thing! she said. It's friendship! And if you're a man who can't tell friendship from charity, then you're to be pitied!

Time seemed to drag with dreamlike slowness, like a knife through cold honey, and the room took on a surreal golden sheen as if I was looking through that same jar of honey. Maybe at that moment, the sun shone just right though the grimy windows, but the woman, the shelves, the jars, everything in the room appeared in tones of gold and sepia, except for the painting behind the counter. From behind the shopkeeper's head, a fluorescent Mary and Jesus glared at me, their cartoon-like faces reproaching me for being there.

Tastes change, Cherie. I find the older I get the more I like to be reminded of my youth.

I guess if you get too close, the twinkling stops; they don’t look like stars anymore.

After everything is said and done, a memory remains a treacherous thing…How long does one cling on to the people they’ve lost? How long could I have remembered my grandfather? How long had it been since I forgotten him and my mind began harbouring other things?

The Professor is coming...