Fiction Quotes | Beyond Motive

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Fiction Quotes

"His theory was that non-fiction could be as artful as fiction."

Gerald Clarke, Zimbabwean Politician

Fiction, Theory

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"A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader."

Vladimir Nabokov, American Novelist

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"Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures."

Jessamyn West, American Author

Fiction, Reality

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"But even gold is not everything: and only a fanatic, and a rather foolish fanatic, would say that this style of fiction summed up and exhausted all the good that fiction could give and do."

George Saintsbury, English Writer

Fiction, Gold, Style

"If you like to read, sometimes it's interesting just to go and see what the reality is, of the word, of the seedy or not so seedy fiction writer, the drunk or sober poet... Sometimes you can go looking for illumination."

Harold Brodkey, American Author

Fiction, Reality, Word, Writer

"Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity."

Gilbert K. Chesterton, English Writer

Fiction, Literature, Luxury, Necessity

"It's not highly intellectual material. I'm dedicating it to the pulp fiction of the past."

Bruce Boxleitner, American Actor

"Fiction is socially meaningful."

David Guterson, American Author

"I don't think Pulp Fiction is hard to watch at all."

Quentin Tarantino, American Director

"Writing fiction, there are no limits to what you write as long as it increases the value of the paper you are writing on."

Buddy Ebsen, American Actor

Fiction, Limits, Value, Writing

"I believe that, like most writers, my personality comes through in the fiction. So in that respect my writing can't be like any other author's really."

Paul Kane, English Writer

Fiction, Personality, Respect, Writers

"Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor doesn't exist."

Bodhidharma, Indian Leader

"You learn a lot, writing fiction."

Penelope Lively, English Author

Fiction, Writing

"Memoirs are a well-known form of fiction."

Frank Harris, Irish Author

"I tend to resist invitations to interpret my own fiction."

J. M. Coetzee, South African Author

"Creating the fictional background for a game world isn't significantly different from creating a background for fiction."

John M. Ford, American Writer

"I don't mean that literary fiction is better than genre fiction, On the contrary; novels can perform two functions and most perform only one."

Mark Haddon, English Novelist

Fiction, Literary

"I don't read a great deal of fiction, to my shame, other than the classics."

Richard Attenborough, English Actor

"There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative."

E. L. Doctorow, American Author

"I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction."

Irvine Welsh, Scottish Novelist

Fiction, Writing

"A fiction about soft or easy deaths is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considered shameful or demeaning."

Susan Sontag, American Author

Fiction, Mythology

"Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by."

Ralph Ellison, American Author

Fiction, Reality

"Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form."

Irwin Shaw, American Novelist

Fiction, Writers

"I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me."

Jonathan Lethem, American Writer

"I do one Xanth novel a year, because at the moment that is all that publishers will accept; they don't want any other type of fiction from me, so Xanth pays my way."

Piers Anthony, English Writer

Fiction, Want, Will

"As a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction, and I've forgotten most of what I did read."

Mark Haddon, English Novelist

"Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic."

John Le Carre, English Writer

"The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form."

Penelope Lively, English Author

Fiction, Pleasure, Writing

"In camp was found a book, the first of the kind I had ever seen, in which I was made a great hero, slaying Indians by the hundreds."

Kit Carson, American Explorer

"I no longer feel pressure to produce fiction."

George Murray, Canadian Poet

Fiction, Pressure

"I think it's Jerry's masterful fiction writing."

Tim LaHaye, American Clergyman

Fiction, Writing

"Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but that's not reality, it's just another aesthetic form of fiction."

Steven Soderbergh, American Director

Fiction, Reality

"I came to the conclusion that I am not a fiction writer."

Tim LaHaye, American Clergyman

Fiction, Writer

"I think I had actually served my apprenticeship as a writer of fiction by writing all those songs. I had already been through phases of autobiographical or experimental stuff."

Kazuo Ishiguro, Japanese Author

Fiction, Songs, Writer, Writing

"I read very widely, both non-fiction and fiction, so I don't think there's a single writer who influences me."

Peter Benchley, American Author

Fiction, Writer

"I was writing fiction, but not finishing fiction."

Elizabeth Moon, American Author

Fiction, Writing

"If there were genders to genres, fiction would be unquestionably feminine."

William Gass, American Novelist

"One can easily classify all works of fiction either as descendants of the Iliad or of the Odyssey."

Raymond Queneau, French Poet

"Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything."

Ivana Trump, Czechoslovakian Celebrity

Fiction, Writing

"I rather like getting away from fiction."

Penelope Lively, English Author

"Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike."

J. K. Rowling, English Author

Fiction, Indifference, Neglect

"I bought a selection of short, romantic fiction novels, studied them, decided that I had found a formula and then wrote a book that I figured was the perfect story. Thank goodness it was rejected."

Louise Brown, English Celebrity

Fiction, Formula, Goodness, Romantic

"I got nice rejections explaining that historical fiction was a difficult sell. But I kept trying."

Anita Diament, American Author

Fiction, Trying

"I like going back and writing fiction."

Julia Sweeney, American Comedian

Fiction, Writing

"If you write fiction, you're by yourself. There are certain advantages to that in that you don't have to explain anything to anybody. But when you get in with others who share the loneliness of the whole enterprise, you're not lonely anymore."

Denis Johnson, German Writer

Fiction, Loneliness, Lonely

"And I sense it was a rather constructed, almost half narrative fiction film in some ways. A lot of it was staged and manipulated to get those things in there that I knew to be strong."

Terry Zwigoff, American Director

Fiction, Film, Sense

"We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings."

Ben Okri, Nigerian Poet

Fiction, Humanity

"Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists."

Eudora Welty, American Author

Fiction, Respect, Sense, Writing

"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means."

Oscar Wilde, Irish Dramatist

"I think good radio often uses the techniques of fiction: characters, scenes, a big urgent emotional question. And as in the best fiction, tone counts for a lot."

Ira Glass, American Journalist

Fiction, Question

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