Fiction Quotes - Page 31

• America's great talent, I think, is to generate desires that would never have occurred, natively,... and to make those desires so painfully real that money becomes a fiction, an imaginary means to some concrete end.

  Karen Russell

  Real, Mean, Thinking

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• In fiction, as in real life, love might inspire acts that are at best foolish and at worst life-threatening, but in the best romances, love is the final, secret ingredient that turns mere mortals into heroes and heroines.

  Sarah MacLean

  Real, Hero, Love Life

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• A program of "disarmament," while imperialist antagonisms survive, is the most pernicious of fictions. Even if it were realized by way of general agreement - an obviously fantastic assumption!- that would by no means prevent a new war. The imperialists do not make war because there are armaments; on the contrary, they forge arms when they need to fight.

  Leon Trotsky

  War, Mean, Fighting

  Leon Trotsky (1937). “The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and where is it Going?”, p.171, Mehring Books

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• Fiction is an elemental force, which has the power to shape reality in its own image - or images, I should say - because reality, like light, exists not only as a single point or particle, but also as an array of possibilities.

  Ruth Ozeki

  Reality, Light, Shapes

  "Ruth Ozeki beats Thomas Pynchon to top Kitschie award" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. February 13, 2014.

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• Writing is such a solitary thing, so its nice, when Im discouraged, to see people still have such faith in fiction.

  Robert Boswell

  Nice, Writing, People

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• I was an outsider, never quite part of what was going on, always looking in. It turned out to be great preparation for writing fiction.

  Hallie Ephron

  Writing, Preparation, Never Quit

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• I think poets are much more dramatic, more theatrical than fiction writers.

  Francine Prose

  Thinking, Dramatic, Poet

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• Once in a while - perhaps every 10 years, or even every generation - a novel appears that profoundly questions the way we look at the world, and at ourselves. Beijing Coma is a poetic examination not just of a country at a defining moment in its history, but of the universal right to remember and to hope. It is, in every sense, a landmark work of fiction

  Tash Aw

  Country, Years, Way

  "Growing up in the world". www.theguardian.com. May 2, 2008.

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• Science fiction offers an intensely bracing angle of view for writers to adopt, especially in a time of constant innovation and crisis, and it is a scandal that in 1999 so many writers have written it and continue to write it in obscurity.

  John Clute

  Writing, Views, Innovation

  "In defense of science fiction" by John Clute, www.cnn.com. May 26, 1999.

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• Delaying and withholding tactics, red herrings, partial and doubtful outcomes are stock in trade for fiction writers, especially crime writers.

  Garry Disher

  Red, Tactics, Outcomes

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• I obviously read and adore traditional fiction. I teach traditional fiction; I also teach all kinds of not-so-traditional fiction.

  Heidi Julavits

  Kind, Adore, Teach

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• For fiction, Im not particularly nationalistic. Im not like the Hugo Chavez of Latin American letters, you know? I want people to read good work.

  Daniel Alarcon

  Latin, People, Letters

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• A lot of crime fiction writing is also lazy. Personality is supposed to be shown by the protagonists taste in music, or were told that the hero looks like the young Cary Grant. Film is the medium these writers are looking for.

  Peter Temple

  Hero, Writing, Personality

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• Fiction is a very powerful tool for teaching history. The Philippines was the first Iraq, the first Vietnam, the first Afghanistan, in the sense that it was the United States initial or baptismal experience in nation-building.

  Miguel Syjuco

  Powerful, Teaching, Iraq

  "Author Q&A: Miguel Syjuco revisits the Philippines' troubled past in Ilustrado". Interview with Brian Lynch, www.straight.com. October 28, 2010.

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• Rick Bass is one of a dwindling handful of American fiction writers still celebrating the importance of place, the natural world, and the struggle of a few brave souls to live and work respectfully in what's left of our western wilderness...The Lives of Rocks is his most lyrical and powerful book to date...a masterwork.

  Howard Frank Mosher

  Powerful, Struggle, Book

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• It's not just what Christian fiction lacks I appreciate - it's what it offers. The variety is vast: contemporary, historical, suspense, mysteries, adventure, young adult, romance, fantasy, science fiction.

  Randy Alcorn

  Christian, Adventure, Appreciate

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• Contrary to common belief, Christian fiction did not begin with Catherine Marshall, Janette Oke, or Frank Peretti.

  Randy Alcorn

  Christian, Common, Belief

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• Ven you read the speeches in the papers, and see as vun gen'lman says of another, 'the Honourable member, if he vill allow me to call him so' you vill understand, sir, that that means, 'if he vill allow me to keep up that 'ere pleasant and uniwersal fiction.'

  Charles Dickens

  Funny, Humorous, Mean

  Charles Dickens (2009). “The Complete Works of Charles Dickens: Edwin Drood and Miscellaneous”, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Increasingly, those who used to teach and write critical or theoretical texts are writing fiction, poetry and so on; and kinds of texts are being produced that call for budding readers rather different from those who studied literature in the past.

  Nicholas Royle

  Writing, Past, Poetry

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• For the best part of my childhood I visited the local library three or four times a week, hunching in the stacks on a foam rubber stool and devouring children's fiction, classics, salacious thrillers, horror and sci-fi, books about cinema and origami and natural history, to the point where my parents encouraged me to read a little less.

  David Nicholls

  Children, Book, Parent

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• I like science fiction, I like fantasy, I like time travel, so I had this idea: What if you had a phone that could call into the past?

  Rainbow Rowell

  Past, Phones, Ideas

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• Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction.

  David Brin

  Character, Doe, Voyages

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• This is a collection of dexterous, loving, beautifully optimistic work that left me breathless and delighted.... Hannu Rajaniemi's magnificent science fiction - as is paradoxically appropriate - is pure magic.

  Amal El-Mohtar

  Optimistic, Magic, Breathless

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• In science-fiction films the monster should always be bigger than the leading lady.

  Roger Corman

  Monsters, Film, Leading Ladies

  Ed Naha, Roger Corman (1982). “The Films of Roger Corman: Brilliance on a Budget”

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• And if I'm guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I'm also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very little of this is necessary to advance the plot. But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.

  George R. R. Martin

  Sex, Philosophy, Reading

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