Fiction Quotes - Page 27

• fiction happens in the belly, it doesn't happen in the brain.

  Isabel Allende

  Brain, Belly, Happens

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• The fact, and the intuition or logic about the fact, are severe coordinates in fiction. In the short story they must cross with hair-line precision.

  Louise Bogan

  Hair, Intuition, Stories

  Louise Bogan (1970). “A Poet's Alphabet: Reflections on the Literary Art and Vocation”, New York : McGraw-Hill

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• Fiction is a way of exploring possibilities present but undreamt of in the living of a single life.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Single Life, Way, Possibility

  Nadine Gordimer (1983). “Selected Stories”, Viking Press

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• It is more important to detect corruption than fiction.

  Charlotte Lennox

  Important, Corruption

  Charlotte Lennox (2009). “The Female Quixote: Easyread Large Edition”, p.348, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• the days of our lives vanish utterly, more insubstantial than if they had been invented. Fiction can seem more enduring than reality.

  Penelope Lively

  Reality, Endure, Ifs

  Penelope Lively (2007). “Moon Tiger”, p.9, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The letter of application ... should be a masterpiece of fiction, papering over all the cracks. Get it properly typed on decent writing paper. Never let it run over the page, people get bored with reading.

  Jilly Cooper

  Running, Work, Reading

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• Literature, fiction, poetry, whatever, makes justice in the world. That's why it almost always has to be on the side of the underdog.

  Grace Paley

  Justice, Underdog, Literature

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• Civilization is a fiction which becomes a fact only as long as everyone can believe in it. It is the cynic, rather than the rebel, who pulls down the whole flimsy structure periodically throughout history.

  Helen McCloy

  Believe, Civilization, Long

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• fiction and lies are both works of creative art, and creation always reveals the creator.

  Helen McCloy

  Art, Lying, Creativity

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• Dave Eggers is a prince among men when it comes to writing deeply felt, socially conscious books that meld reportage with fiction. While A Hologram for the King is fiction...it's a strike against the current state of global economic injustice.

  Elissa Schappell

  Kings, Book, Writing

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• We thought a magazine, even a self proclaimed literary review, had to be involved in politics. We felt sex was healthy and made (then) bold use of fiction and graphics so declaring. We operated on a shoestring and still got our issues out on time. In short, we had a ball.

  Barney Rosset

  Sex, Self, Issues

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• Records can be destroyed if they do not suit the prejudices of ruling cliques, lost if they become incomprehensible, distorted if a copyist wishes to impose a new meaning upon them, misunderstood if we lack the information to interpret them. The past is like a huge library, mostly fiction.

  Henry Ford

  Past, Misunderstood, Library

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• writing had to take the form of journalism. Not for me the Shangri-la of fiction. The rewards, if any, would have been too little and too late, the bailiffs were at the door. ... Two large bailiffs, they were, who visited frequently and smiled like grand pianos, the only really reliable men in my life. They told me what they were going to do and if they did it, woe was me.

  Jill Tweedie

  Writing, Men, Two

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• The importance of the romantic element does not rest upon conjecture. Pleasing testimonies abound. Hannah More traced her earliest impressions of virtue to works of fiction; and Adam Clarke gives a list of tales that won his boyish admiration. Books of entertainment led him to believe in a spiritual world; and he felt sure of having been a coward, but for romances. He declared that he had learned more of his duty to God, his neighbor and himself from Robinson Crusoe than from all the books, except the Bible, that were known to his youth.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Spiritual, Believe, Book

  Robert Aris Willmott (1907). “Pleasures of Literature”

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• Legitimately produced, and truly inspired, fiction interprets humanity, informs the understanding, and quickens the affections. It reflects ourselves, warns us against prevailing social follies, adds rich specimens to our cabinets of character, dramatizes life for the unimaginative, daguerreotypes it for the unobservant, multiplies experience for the isolated or inactive, and cheers age, retirement and invalidism with an available and harmless solace.

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman

  Retirement, Cheer, Character

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• Fiction structures an experience for the reader to live through. ... That is why people read: to have experiences.

  Bonnie Friedman

  Book, Reading, People

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• A gritty grain of truth lay at the heart of most legends, she had told me, and the slow accretion of fiction hardened in layers around it.

  Caroline Llewellyn

  Heart, Legends, Layers

  Caroline Llewellyn (1994). “Life Blood”

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• I feel like a sailor, or better, like an explorer of the immense universe of art. The artist is a discoverer in search of the keys that open the door to emotions and feelings . Art is the place where rationality, fantasy, truth and fiction mix up in a detonating mixture.

  Augusto De Luca

  Art, Keys, Doors

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• The oft-heard comment that Leonardo [da Vinci]'s genius managed to transcend the culture of his time is amply justified. But his was not a science-fiction voyage into the future as much as a plunge into the past.

  Lucio Russo

  Past, Culture, Genius

  "The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn". Book by Lucio Russo, 2004.

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• Inspiration comes from so many sources. Music, other fiction, the non-fiction I read, TV shows, films, news reports, people I know, stories I hear, misheard words or lyrics, dreams

  Trudi Canavan

  Dream, Inspiration, Tv Shows

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• here are the top three global resources getting scarcer in the twenty-first century: ozone layer, rain forest, people eager to read the fiction of others. That's right, folks. For the first time in I believe written history, there are far more fiction writers on earth than fiction readers.

  Sandra Tsing Loh

  Book, Reading, Rain

  Sandra Tsing Loh (2002). “A Year in Van Nuys”, Three Rivers Press

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• When I'm not writing, I can't make sense of out anything. I feel the need to make some sense and find some order, and writing fiction is the only way I've found that seems to begin to do that.

  Alice McDermott

  Writing, Order, Needs

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• Its a heartening fact about the human race that utopian fiction precedes dystopian fiction in the evolution of literature.

  Paul Di Filippo

  Race, Dystopian Fiction, Literature

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• At DePauw, I was teaching writing and fiction. The things I wanted to teach, more than anything else, were form and theory of the novel, of narrative. I liked those classes.

  Nic Pizzolatto

  Teaching, Writing, Class

  "True voice brings 'True Detective' to life". Interview with Christopher Borrelli, www.chicagotribune.com. January 22, 2014.

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• I like rules. I like definitions, categories, and writing advice of all sorts. When I'm writing fiction, there are often a lot of things for me to try to get right at once, and rules help me to stay organized. But my favorite rule of all is that, ultimately, there are no rules.

  Bruce Holland Rogers

  Writing, Advice, Trying

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