3,834 Quotes About Fiction

The world that spun from the web of her imagination was manifestly more real to [Patricia Highsmith] than what she saw before her. It was as if, like her fiction, she inhabited a paraxial region, and area which, like one of the working titles for Strangers on a Train, could be said to lie at 'The Other Side of the Mirror'.

Literature is claimed to be a mirror of the world,” I said, “but the Outlanders are fooling themselves. The BookWorld is as orderly as people in the RealWorld *hope* their own world to be—it isn’t a mirror, it’s an aspiration.

Some paint with brushes and others use words.

A deus ex machina will never appear in real life so you best make other arrangements.

Her heart yearned to be buried with her brother.

He was right. Showing emotion wasn't weakness. She may cry, but she would not shrink from doing whatever was needed to defend her brothers.

The only thing that stops us from being joyful is ourselves.

Joy no longer seemed as fragile as it once had.

She had once believed that her happiness was dependent on people staying healthy and circumstances being good. But now she felt that joy was not so easily broken as long as it was bound together with love and hope - love of God and good people in her life and the hope that she would always have love, both to give and to receive... "On earth as it is in heaven.