Fiction Quotes - Page 19

• The most popular American fiction seems to be about successful people who win, and good crime fiction typically does not explore that world. But honestly, if all crime fiction was quality fiction, it would be taken more seriously.

  George Pelecanos

  Taken, Successful, Winning

  Interview with Keith Phipps, www.avclub.com. September 19, 2001.

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• I'm a novelist, I'm not an activist. I'm not a non-fiction writer, I'm not a journalist. I'm not a foodie, I'm not even really an animal person, or an environmentalist. I did the best I could with this, but it's not who I am.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Animal, Who I Am, Novelists

  Interview with Gregg LaGambina, www.avclub.com. November 17, 2009.

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• I write my first draft by hand, at least for fiction. For non-fiction, I write happily on a computer, but for fiction I write by hand, because I'm trying to achieve a kind of thoughtless state, or an unconscious instinctive state. I'm not reading what I write when I wrote. It's an unconscious outpouring that's a mess, and it's many, many steps away from anything anyone would want to read. Creating that way seems to generate the most interesting material for me to work with, though.

  Jennifer Egan

  Reading, Writing, Hands

  Interview with Marah Eakin, www.avclub.com. May 12, 2011.

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• The culture is still there, and people are still doing it. I imagine some people are doing it very well indeed. As for me, it definitely was my native literary culture. Science fiction was where I'm from, but on the way to now, I went through a lot of other territory, and I wasn't really that culturally conventional an SF writer when I started.

  William Gibson

  People, Way, Culture

  Interview with Zack Handlen, www.avclub.com. September 7, 2010.

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• I had a list of things that science fiction, particularly American science fiction, to me seemed to do with tedious regularity. One was to not have strong female protagonists. One was to envision the future, whatever it was, as America.

  William Gibson

  Strong, America, Lists

  Interview with Zack Handlen, www.avclub.com. September 7, 2010.

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• I can be absolutely comfortable with an apocalyptic Jesus because he was simply wrong. As long as he's wrong I don't worry about him, and basically everyone else who was announcing in the year 2000 at midnight, the end of the world is coming, I expect them to be wrong. Now if they're right of course, I'll be very uncomfortable that night. But as long as everyone for 2000 years has been wrong about the apocalypse, I can be quite comfortable with it. It's space fiction.

  John Dominic Crossan

  Jesus, Night, Years

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• As a journalist, I would talk to writers, directors, creative people, and discover that for an awful lot of them, the moment they became successful, that was all they were allowed to do. So you end up talking to the bestselling science-fiction author who wrote a historical-fiction novel that everybody loved, but no one would publish.

  Neil Gaiman

  Successful, Fiction Novels, Talking

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. September 28, 2005.

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• I'm not a science-fiction writer. I've only written one book that's science fiction, and that's Fahrenheit 451. All the others are fantasy.

  Ray Bradbury

  Book, Fantasy, Written

  Ray Bradbury, Steven L. Aggelis (2004). “Conversations with Ray Bradbury”, p.18, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Fantasies are things that can't happen, and science fiction is about things that can happen.

  Ray Bradbury

  Fantasy, Science Fiction, Happens

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I think you can use fiction to get inside people's minds.

  Don Winslow

  Thinking, People, Mind

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I do 30 to 40 books a year, so it's a fair amount of reading. Back and forth between nonfiction and fiction. I usually have three or four things that are open on my desk, on my bed, on audiobook in the car.

  James Patterson

  Book, Reading, Years

  Source: www.usatoday.com

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• I hardly ever read mainstream fiction that deals with life as it is. I like an element of fantasy, something that isn`t quite of the real world.

  Stephen King

  Real, Elements, World

  "Stephen King has called Ira Levin-author of 'Rosemary's". Interview with Cheryl Lavin, articles.chicagotribune.com. April 7, 1991.

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• Lizzie Pepper is pure fiction! The character is pulled from tabloids. But I think we all look at celebrity marriages and invest in them.

  Hilary Liftin

  Character, Thinking, Looks

  "Getting to Take on That Life Temporarily". The Believer interview, logger.believermag.com. July 21, 2015.

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• I was thinking one of the great things about fiction is we, as a race, only get to look out of our own eyes at the world. And fiction is a fantastic way of looking out through somebody else's eyes.

  Neil Gaiman

  Eye, Thinking, Race

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• Fiction takes us to places that we would never otherwise go, and puts us behind eyes that are not our own.

  Neil Gaiman

  Eye, Behinds

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• Any woman who wishes to be an intellectual, to write non-fiction, to deal with theory, faces a lot of discrimination coming her way and perhaps even self-doubt because there aren't that many who've gone before you. And I think that the most powerful tool we can have is to be clear about our intent. To know what it is we want to do rather than going into institutions thinking that the institution is going to frame for us.

  Bell Hooks

  Powerful, Writing, Thinking

  Interview with Pierce Freelon, blackademics.org. October, 2006.

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• Most of what I want to try to do is continue to go places with fiction that I've never gone before, and tell stories I've never told before, and one of the problems you rapidly discover about fans is what fans want is the last thing they liked. They want more of that.

  Neil Gaiman

  Trying, Fans, Gone

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• I personally have a great deal of respect for readers. I have a great deal of respect for the human race. I think most people can tell the difference between fiction and fact. I think that the action of writing about something does not condone it. The best thing I can ever hope to do is provide good questions, and I think I do that. I hope I do.

  Neil Gaiman

  Writing, Thinking, Race

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• Let me roughly divide books into those which compete with the movies and those with which the movies cannot compete. They are the books that can elevate or instruct. If they are fine works of fiction, they can deepen your appreciation of human life. If they are serious works of nonfiction, they can inform or enlighten you.

  Mortimer Adler

  Appreciation, Book, Nonfiction

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• Sometimes strange fiction, becomes grim reality.

  Wayne Gerard Trotman

  Reality, Strange, Sometimes

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• In a brilliant fusion of fact and fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips has written the novel of the year. It's the story of a serial killer's crimes and capture, yes, but it's also a compulsively readable story of how one brave woman faces up to acts of terrible violence in order to create something good and strong in the aftermath. Quiet Dell will be compared to In Cold Blood, but Phillips offers something Capote could not: a heroine who lights up the dark places and gives us hope in our humanity.

  Stephen King

  Strong, Dark, Light

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• Braxton Cosby's stories feel personal and well thought-out. I'm happy to welcome this entertaining writer to the YA science fiction field. I look forward to more of his work!

  Tananarive Due

  Looks, Stories, Fields

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• Pulp Fiction is my favorite movie of all time.

  Paul Pierce

  My Favorite, All Time, Pulp

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• I've always been drawn to historical fiction.

  Karin Slaughter

  Historical, Historical Fiction

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• Jax Cassidy is a brilliant new voice in contemporary fiction. Full of heat, seduction, and romance, her winning characters are sure to capture your heart and find a place on your keeper shelf.

  Gemma Halliday

  Heart, Character, Winning

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