Fiction Quotes | Beyond Motive 2/2

top of page

Fiction Quotes

"I did documentaries for maybe 10 years before I turned to fiction films."

Walter Salles, Brazilian Director

"I can't read historical fiction because I find the real thing so much more interesting."

Antonia Fraser, British Author

"Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish."

Dean Koontz, American Author

Fiction, Literary

"To create a past that seemed authentic but would be a fiction, you need an invented language."

Jeanette Winterson, British Novelist

Fiction, Language, Past

"I want prose fiction to be recognized as that, and I'm not interested in writing as it becomes more personal."

John C. Hawkes, American Novelist

Fiction, Prose, Want, Writing

"Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world."

J. K. Rowling, English Author

Fiction, Hearing, World

"I don't read fiction at all."

Brent Spiner, American Actor

"However far fiction writers stray from their own lives and experiences - and I stray pretty far from mine - I think, ultimately, that we may be writing what we need to write in some way, albeit unconsciously."

Wally Lamb, American Author

Fiction, May, Pretty, Writers

"The neurotic is nailed to the cross of his fiction."

Alfred Adler, Austrian Psychologist

"I also read modern novels - I have just had to read 60 as I am one of the judges for the Orange Fiction Prize."

Kate Adie, British Journalist

Fiction, Judges

"Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey."

Raymond Queneau, French Poet

"Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?"

Tanith Lee, British Writer

Fiction, Writing

"Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker series also shows the potential of lighter fantastic fiction. I read the first, and listened to a tape of a later one, and it's fun."

Piers Anthony, English Writer

Fiction, First, Fun, Potential

"That's why I have always admired documentaries, because they open windows that can make you understand much better where you come from, much better than fiction, I think."

Walter Salles, Brazilian Director

Fiction, Open, Windows

"Young readers have to be entertained. No child reads fiction because they think it's going to make them a better person."

Mark Haddon, English Novelist

"The easiest songs to write are pure fiction. There is no limit to how you can tell the story. I find it difficult when I'm replaying an event through a song."

Jason Mraz, American Musician

Fiction, Song, Songs

"I tend to prefer the shelter of fiction."

Armistead Maupin, American Novelist

"It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have."

Flannery O'Connor, American Author

Fiction, Poor, Writer

"It's always a mixture of fiction and your own story. It's more I recreate atmospheres and moods through songs."

Keren Ann, Israeli Musician

Fiction, Moods, Songs

"A public is a necessary fiction."

Rowan D. Williams, British Archbishop

Fiction, Public

"I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it's such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction."

Judith Krantz, American Novelist

Fiction, Fun, Writing, Years

"Imminent GM bankruptcy was always fiction, created by Wall Street and the media."

Robert Lutz, American Executive

"The 'interactive fiction' format hasn't changed in any fundamental way since the early 1970s, in the same way that the format of the novel hasn't since 1700."

Graham Nelson, English Mathematician

"In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible."

Robert Morgan, American Soldier

Fiction, Language

"Good fiction must be entertaining, but what makes fiction special - and True - is that the realness of a novel allows it to carry a larger message."

Jerry B. Jenkins, American Novelist

"I really don't believe in magic."

J. K. Rowling, English Author

"I instantly chucked my academic ambitions and began writing fiction full-time."

Peter Straub, American Writer

Fiction, Writing

"First of all, writing at best - certainly fiction writing - more and more I think is magic."

Kathy Acker, American Activist

Fiction, First, Magic, Writing

"Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction."

John Cheever, American Writer

"When I started writing fiction, I knew how good it was immediately."

John C. Hawkes, American Novelist

Fiction, Writing

"And then I met Jerry and he's such a creative fiction writer, and I don't know if there's ever been a team put together the way we are - where one person does the theological way out and suggestions, and the other person goes into the cave and does the fiction writing."

Tim LaHaye, American Clergyman

Fiction, Writer, Writing

"There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction."

John Le Carre, English Writer

"I'm writing another novel and I know what I'm going to do after, which may be something more like this again, maybe some strange mixture of fiction and non-fiction."

Penelope Lively, English Author

Fiction, May, Writing

"I don't really have special rituals, but I don't try to write fiction unless I have a minimum of a few hours. For me, it takes a while to settle into a mode where I'm truly concentrating."

Curtis Sittenfeld, American Writer

Fiction, Rituals

"A stage play requires very different craft from a book, fiction or otherwise, and ditto from a screenplay."

Dirk Benedict, American Actor

"Ripley is married. And he's not lost. He has his feet on the ground."

Patricia Highsmith, American Novelist

"Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer's role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there."

J. G. Ballard, British Author

Fiction, Reality, Writer

"I had been writing fiction since I was in eighth grade, because I loved it."

Thomas Perry, German Musician

Fiction, Writing

"I'd have been a filmmaker or a cartoonist or something else which extended from the visual arts into the making of narratives if I hadn't been able to shift into fiction."

Jonathan Lethem, American Writer

"And, of course, some SF is set close enough to here and now that Anglo and European do apply. Since many of the writers come from those backgrounds, so does much of the fiction."

Stanley Schmidt, American Writer

Fiction, Now, Writers

"I read the newspapers avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction."

Aneurin Bevan, Welsh Politician

Fiction, Newspapers

"Create a world in which these things do or do not exist, or in which they are extended in some way. Test reality against this fiction. The reader will recognize the world that you're talking about, even though it may be another one altogether."

Theodore Sturgeon, American Writer

Fiction, May, Reality, Talking

"If there were a better, clearer, shorter way of saying what the fiction says, then why not scrap the fiction?"

J. M. Coetzee, South African Author

Fiction, Saying

"It would be easier to write a novel without reader input, but I feel the fiction is richer for it."

Piers Anthony, English Writer

bottom of page