On Fiction Quotes

That's what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again.

Fiction doesn’t tell us something we don’t know, it tells us something we know but don’t know that we know.

Some people say they're gathering DNA. Perhaps they're gathering it for the future when the human race is stronger or weaker, who knows. That's science fiction and mere speculation.

You crave winning and fear losing instead of just doing. To succeed you must remove your self-imposed limitations.

everything happens for a reason.

Myth is the facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter.

There is nothing to be learned from history anymore. We're in science fiction now.

Everyone is isolated from everyone else. The concept of society is like a cushion to protect us from the knowledge of that isolation. A fiction that serves as an anesthetic.

What's good about writing is that when you write novels or fiction, people can see that the problems in one region are similar to problems in another region.

He says I'm beautiful as a red tomato

Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice.

Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.

The problem with fiction, it has to be plausible. That's not true with non-fiction.

I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.

I read recipes the same way I read science fiction. I get to the end and say to myself "well, that's not going to happen

The smallest indivisible human unit is two people, not one; one is a fiction. From such nets of souls societies, the social world, human life springs.

Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.

I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.

Partition is after all only an old fortress of crumbled masonry - held together with the plaster of fiction.

I love fiction because in fiction you go into the thoughts of people, the little people, the people who were defeated, the poor, the women, the children that are never in history books.

Fact is often stranger than fiction because most writers of fiction try to make their stories plausible.

The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more.

Life is about trusting your feelings and taking chances, losing and finding happiness, appreciating the memories, learning from the past, and realizing people change.

We grew up learning to cheer on the underdog because we see ourselves in them.

My fiction may, now and again, illuminate aspects of the human condition, but I do not consciously set out to do so: I am a storyteller.

Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything.

The trouble with fiction," said John Rivers, "is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.

It's always wrong of course to say that you can't do this or you can't do that in fiction. You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much.

The image that fiction presents is purged of the distractions, confusions and accidents of ordinary life.

Horror fiction shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction.

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

You know how sometimes you tell yourself that you have a choice, but really you don't have a choice? Just because there are alternatives doesn't mean they apply to you.

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something.

Last, but not least -- in fact, this is most important -- you need a happy ending. However, if you can create tragic situations and jerk a few tears before the happy ending, it will work much better.

But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

I love fairytales. I like fantasy a lot, science fiction, I like magic. I like to create magic. I love magic.

Impotence, fetishism, bisexuality, and bondage are all facts of life, and our fiction should reflect that.

For me science fiction is a way of thinking, a way of logic that bypasses a lot of nonsense. It allows people to look directly at important subjects.

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.

I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.

An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.

Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.

Don't make a big distinction between fiction and non-fiction. These are arbitrary distinctions.

A well-thought-out story doesn’t need to resemble real life. Life itself tries with all its might to resemble a well-crafted story.

There's a fine line between fiction and non-fiction and I think I snorted it somewhere in 1979

Blue uniforms are real. Cops are a social fiction