On Fiction Quotes - Page 2

Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.

One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.

Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it.

I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.

T.G.T.B.T: too good to be true.

Finally I do like best of all stories whose necessity is in the implied recognition that someplace out there there exists an urgency—a chaos—, an insanity, a misrule of some dire sort which can end life as we know it but for the fact that this very story is written, this order found, this style determined, the worst averted, and we are beneficiaries of that order by being readers.

All stories are true. But some of them never happened.

...required for good fiction: character, conflict, change through time. And if you're really blessed, you get resolution. But life doesn't usually work out that way.

While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices... Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.