3,834 Quotes About Fiction

Literature is the real life of imaginary people.

Vane’s lips tightened to suppress a smile. “Why so hostile, love?”“You whacked me on the head with a ball!”“You deserved it.

Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it."[Q&A with Larry McCaffery, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1993, Vol. 13.2]

But then, that’s the beauty of writing stories—each one is an exploratory journey in search of a reason and a shape. And when you find that reason and that shape, there’s no feeling like it."[Peter Wild Interviews TC Boyle, 3:AM Magazine, June 2003]

Karl Marx: "Religion is the opiate of the masses."Carrie Fisher: "I did masses of opiates religiously.

I caught his hand. “What do you want me to do?”Leaning down, he kissed the pulse beating on my neck just above the damaged skin. “Tomorrow, I need you to die.

...art deals, at its best, with what has never been observed, or observed only peripherally-darts from what is to what might have been-asking with total interest and sobriety such questions as 'what if apple trees could talk?' or 'what if the haughty old woman next door should fall in love with Mr. Powers, our mailman?' The artist's imagination, or the world it builds, is the laboratory of the unexperienced, both the heroic and the unspeakable.

He’d used the amulet to read my thoughts again. I pictured smacking him in the face.

I noticed him right away. No, it wasn’t his lean, rugged face. Or the dark waves of shiny hair that hung just a little too long on his forehead. It wasn’t the slim, collarless biker jacket he wore, hugging his lean shoulders. It was the way he stood. The confident way he waited in the cafeteria line to get a slice of pizza. He didn’t saunter. He didn’t amble. He stood at the center, and let the other people buzz around him. His stance was straight and sure.