Fiction Quotes - Page 27

• I make a distinction between true and real. I think that the story is true, it’s just not real. That’s what a parable is. It takes things that we all know are real, and it takes life events that actually happens, and it weaves them into a fiction that allows truth to actually be embedded.

  William P. Young

  Real, Thinking, Stories

  Interview with C.J. Darlington, Miriam Parker, Deena Peterson, Melissa J. Carswell, www.titletrakk.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I wrote a story for my kids. It's fiction. It's not systematic theology. It's not a new book of the Bible. It's flawed, I wrote it. All of that goes into the mix, but I love the controversy. It elevates the conversation.

  William P. Young

  Book, Kids, Stories

  Interview with C.J. Darlington, Miriam Parker, Deena Peterson, Melissa J. Carswell, www.titletrakk.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think that most creative fiction involves the transformational process, whether it is Dickens or Dostoyevsky and the writer in some sense is expressing their own journey through such a wilderness.

  William P. Young

  Journey, Thinking, Creative

  9 Copy quote

• Historical fiction is not only a respectable literary form; it is a standing reminder of the fact that history is about human beings.

  Helen Cam

  Historical, Facts, Form

  Helen Maud Cam, Historical Association (Great Britain) (1968). “Historical Novels”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Listen to others as if they are telling you the truth, ask questions when you aren't clear, and allow others the room to have different feelings than you. No more assigning hidden motives, prejudging and cutting people off before separating fact from fiction.

  Rhonda Britten

  Cutting, People, Feelings

  FaceBook post by Rhonda Britten from Oct 24, 2015

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Here is one of the fundamental defects of American fiction--perhaps the one character that sets it off sharply from all other known kinds of contemporary fiction. It habitually exhibits, not a man of delicate organization in revolt against the inexplicable tragedy of existence, but a man of low sensibilities and elemental desires yielding himself gladly to his environment, and so achieving what, under a third-rate civilization, passes for success. To get on: this is the aim. To weigh and reflect, to doubt and rebel: this is the thing to be avoided.

  H. L. Mencken

  Character, Men, Contemporary Fiction

  H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science Fiction: fairy tales for nerds.

  Richard Bayan

  Nerd, Fairy Tale, Tales

  4 Copy quote

• In employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, we are only following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Christian, Example, Goodness

  4 Copy quote

• Every fiction since Homer has taught friendship, patriotism, generosity, contempt of death. These are the highest virtues; and the fictions which taught them were therefore of the highest, though not of unmixed, utility.

  James Mackintosh

  Generosity, Taught, Virtue

  Sir James Mackintosh (1835). “Memoirs of the life of the Right Honorable Sir James Mackintosh”, p.42

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Who has ever stopped to think of the divinity of Lamont Cranston?

  Amiri Baraka

  Thinking, Divinity, Radio

  "In Memory of Radio" l. 1 (1961)

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Character halts without aid of the imagination, which our classes in Shakespeare and Browning, music and drawing, recognize not only as amusement and by-play of the mind, but a co-ordinate power. Its work is unhappily styled fiction; for to idealize is to realize.

  C. A. Bartol

  Character, Class, Play

  4 Copy quote

• A fiction which is designed to inculcate an object wholly alien to the imagination sins against the first law of art; and if a writer of fiction narrow his scope to particulars so positive as polemical controversy in matters ecclesiastical, political or moral, his work may or may not be an able treatise, but it must be a very poor novel.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Art, Law, Imagination

  4 Copy quote

• Fiction is a potent agent for good--in the hands of the good.

  Suzanne Curchod

  Hands, Agents

  4 Copy quote

• to look back on one's life is to experience the capriciousness of memory. ... the past is not static. It can be relived only in memory, and memory is a device for forgetting as well as remembering. It, too, is not immutable. It rediscovers, reinvents, reorganizes. Like a passage of prose it can be revised and repunctuated. To that extent, every autobiography is a work of fiction and every work of fiction an autobiography.

  P. D. James

  Memories, Past, Looks

  P. D. James (2011). “Time to Be in Earnest”, p.15, Faber & Faber

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I write nothing but fiction for some time I begin to get stupid, and to feel rather as if it had been a long meal of sweets; then history is a rest, for research or narration brings a different part of the mind into play.

  Charlotte Mary Yonge

  Sweet, Stupid, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• I honestly believe that everything I know about the writing of non-fiction (or writing) could be engraved on the head of a pin with a garden hoe.

  M. F. K. Fisher

  Believe, Writing, Garden

  4 Copy quote

• I read secular fiction, but also enjoy novels with a Christian worldview.

  Randy Alcorn

  Christian, Enjoy, Novel

  7 Copy quote

• Those who relish the study of character may profit by the reading of good works of fiction, the product of well-established authors.

  Richard Whately

  Reading, Character, May

  4 Copy quote

• Today, we know that time travel need not be confined to myths, science fiction, Hollywood movies, or even speculation by theoretical physicists. Time travel is possible. For example, an object traveling at high speeds ages more slowly than a stationary object. This means that if you were to travel into outer space and return, moving close to light speed, you could travel thousands of years into the Earth's future.

  Clifford A. Pickover

  Moving, Mean, Space

  Clifford A. Pickover (1999). “Time: A Traveler's Guide”, p.15, Oxford University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Truth and fiction are so aptly mixed that all seems uniform and of a piece.

  Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon

  Pieces, Uniforms, Seems

  6 Copy quote

• when we leave society and come into the presence of Nature, we become children again; and the fictions of thought and action assumed among men drop off like a garment.

  Amelia Barr

  Nature, Children, Men

  Amelia E. Barr (2017). “The Maid of Maiden Lane: A Sequel to "The Bow of Orange Ribbon." A Love Story”, p.41, Sai ePublications via PublishDrive

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... if fiction does not show us a better life than reality, what is the good of it?

  Amelia Barr

  Reality, Doe, Better Life

  Amelia Barr (2017). “All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography”, p.408, Litres

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's hard to get justice in the real world. It's possible in fiction.

  Lauren Beukes

  Real, Justice, World

  5 Copy quote

• A good short story is a work of art which daunts us in proportion to its brevity.... No inspiration is too noble for it; no amountof hard work is too severe for it.

  Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

  Art, Inspiration, Hard Work

  4 Copy quote

• Truth is the most powerful thing in the world, since even fiction itself must be governed by it, and can only please by its resemblance. The appearance of reality is necessary to make any passion agreeably represented, and to be able to move others we must be moved ourselves, or at least seem to be so, upon some probable grounds.

  Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury

  Truth, Powerful, Moving

  4 Copy quote