Fiction Quotes

• Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

  Mark Twain

  Truth, Science, Sticks

  Following the Equator ch. 15, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" (1897) See Byron 33; Chesterton 6

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• A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

  Virginia Woolf

  Women, Writing, Words Of Wisdom

  A Room of One's Own ch. 1 (1929)

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• Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

  Simone Weil

  Life, Real, Carpe Diem

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.56, Psychology Press

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• For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.

  Lord Byron

  Funny, Truth, Literature

  Don Juan canto 14, st. 101 (1823) See Chesterton 6; Twain 93

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• Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

  Stephen King

  Life, Beautiful, Truth

  Stephen King (2011). “Danse Macabre”, p.430, Simon and Schuster

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• Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

  Philip Roth

  Reading, Noise, Reader

  FaceBook post by Philip Roth from Jun 17, 2011

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• For after my marriage I had made various attempts to write fiction. They were clearly failures.

  Mary Augusta Ward

  Marriage, Writing, Made

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• Science fiction readers probably have the gene for novelty, and seem to enjoy a cascade of invention as much as a writer enjoys providing one.

  Walter Jon Williams

  Science, Novelty, Invention

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• I first read science fiction in the old British Chum annual when I was about 12 years old.

  A. E. van Vogt

  Science, Years, Firsts

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• As a child, I read science fiction, but from the very beginnings of my reading for pleasure, I read a lot of non-fictional history, particularly historical biography.

  Norman Spinrad

  Children, Reading, Science

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• Science fiction is very healthy in its form.

  Robert Sheckley

  Science, Healthy, Form

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• In the meantime, I just have to create those realistic goals about the fact that I don't have a ton of options as an actor who's been on a science fiction show for 8 years.

  Michael Shanks

  Science, Years, Goal

  Interview with Ken P., www.ign.com. July 7, 2004.

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• I think if I'm going to do a science fiction, I'm going to go down a new path that I want to do.

  Ridley Scott

  Science, Thinking, Want

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• I understand that postmodern literature probably means people like DeLillo, The Fiction Collective, but I don't get it that those writers are really influenced by postmodern theorists.

  Kathy Acker

  Mean, Hygiene, People

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• I tend to resist invitations to interpret my own fiction.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Invitations, My Own

  Interview with David Attwell, www.dn.se. December 8, 2003.

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• The novel doesn't come into existence until certain methods of reproducing fiction come along.

  Leslie Fiedler

  Method, Certain, Existence

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• Against the sustained tick of a watch, fiction takes the measure of a life, a season, a look exchanged, the turning point, desire as brief as a dream, the grief and terror that after childhood we cease to express.

  Mavis Gallant

  Dream, Grief, Childhood

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• All novels are experimental.

  Anthony Burgess

  Novel

  Anthony Burgess, Earl G. Ingersoll, Mary C. Ingersoll (2008). “Conversations with Anthony Burgess”, p.60, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The idea that I'm going to have to sit down to write some fiction where I'm going to have to think of a plot would really scare me, because it would come out a mess.

  Tracey Emin

  Writing, Thinking, Ideas

  Interview with Stephan Collishaw, www.believermag.com. April 2004.

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• The older I've got the less I find myself going back and re-reading or really reading new fiction or poetry.

  Reynolds Price

  Reading

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• I don't read fiction at all.

  Brent Spiner

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• You learn a lot, writing fiction.

  Penelope Lively

  Writing, Writing Fiction

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• No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest.

  Octavia Butler

  Writing, Natural, Guides

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• I'm writing another novel and I know what I'm going to do after, which may be something more like this again, maybe some strange mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

  Penelope Lively

  Writing, Mixtures, May

  "'I'm not a historian but I can get obsessively interested in the past'". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. August 25, 2001.

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• People as me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research.

  Frederik Pohl

  Writing, People, Research

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