Fiction Quotes - Page 14

Finishing my thoughts aloud meant saying how my dad had passed, and I had failed. How I had smoked joints and lay in bed enabling my hopelessness. I’d been the ugly in my world.

Rebecca Berto

There was no starting point for the rebellion, but I could mark an arbitrary one: that a grown-up was someone who, first and foremost, could drink a Coke at whim.

Teju Cole

Why not?

Howard Feigenbaum

People in books were always so charming, and all their thoughts and actions so comprehensible. They all invariably had a clear, well-defined object in life, and strove through a few hundred engrossing pages to attain this object. They were all noble and generous, and their lives were bright and beautiful. What interesting and delightful moments Irene had passed in their society! They had made her laugh and cry and suffer and rejoice, and had entertained her with the brilliancy of their wit. How dull and colourless real people had appeared beside these heroes and heroines of fiction.

Aimée Dostoyevsky

A novel, though fiction, often speaks to the largest truths.

Mark Rubinstein

If I could turn my thoughts into spoken words and share them with someone, they’d become real and mean something. Now, they were only lines that could be erased when I didn’t feel them anymore or hopeful thoughts that, like shadows, would disappear when the sun went away. - Rebecca Meyer, Crooked Lines

Holly Michael

Not the least of the hardships to which the dying are subject is the visitation of their loved ones. The poor darlings, God bless them, may feel every impulse to condole and console, but their primary sensation is nonetheless one of embarrassment in the presence of the unspeakable and a guilty gratitude that it is not yet their fate.

Louis Auchincloss

Her heart was telling her to trust him, but it wouldn’t be the first time that that foolish muscle, there in the middle of her chest, had betrayed her.

Mirella Muffarotto

Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and life doesn't.

Neil Gaiman

No matter how many romantic poems you recite, no matter how many glorious tales of love you read, how can you really understand the condition if you've never found yourself in it?

Sherry D Ficklin

Granted, there is always much that is hidden, and we must not forget that the writing of history - however dryly it is done and however sincere the desire for objectivity - remains literature. History's third dimension is always fiction

Hermann Hesse

Most stories are not about peoplebut about life, an addiction like the rest of themthat destroys you even as you love it,but you love it anyway and can never get enough.

Michael Hogan

Fiction is overrated, Fly. We’ve discussed this. In the time it takes those novelist fuckers to contemplate a few poetic passages, a thousand kids die from malnutrition. Immediacy, man, that’s what counts.

Rawi Hage

Family is a permanent adhesive that creates a lifetime bond.

Conrad Brooks

I’m a reader who uses fiction as a way of worrying about life.

Lorin Stein

His kiss was light but lingering, like smoke from shivering lips on a freezing winter morning.

Rebecca Berto

History is written by the survivors.

Gareth Johnson

In this strife-torn valley, I have always been tormented by feelings of indefinite and eternal uncertainty. "The Half Mother" is an outcome of those feelings.

Shahnaz Bashir

Good writing should help us see the world in new ways, it should crack open our generosity towards each other. That's what I hope my work does anyway. I want someone to read it and know that they aren't alone in the universe. I want my words to act as connective tissue.

Patrick Hicks

Imagination is highly suspect. Reality is what is beautiful. But we are blind to it because it is familiar.

Mal Peet

Stallions," Frank said, "they're fightin' over a girl. - DANIEL'S ESPERANZA

Veronica Randolph Batterson

You look within and upon and around me, savoring every inch. You pull my ear for no reason, and I can tell you really don’t want to cry. As a tear falls between by breasts, I look away and pretend the grass is a jungle, and the ants, little kings of forgotten tribes.

Virginia Petrucci

To get girls he had figured out that all you had to do was talk little, the bare minimum, and listen much, without ever passing judgment. [Mister Gregory]

Sveva Casati Modignani

Thanks to Dashiell Hammett. "He was thin, walked with a stick, and was the only private dick I knew who used the pockets of his sport coat. Maybe that means something, maybe not." Ramone Ramone, 2013

Thomas Dekooning

Sin says, "Do you think that people get married with aspirations to divorce? Do you think that people try drugs with the motive to be addicted? No. It is not merely the act that you see taking place, but it is I that has taken their minds captive. I have played the lobes of their minds like the strings on a harp; soothing them and making them feel, see, and hear the images that they desire in their innermost being.

Stephen and Tiffany Domena

But Pierre had been born with a shrewdness that made him early aware that a failure to believe that human events were ordered by a higher power was regarded by many in the highest positions as obnoxious and even sinful, and as nothing was to be gained by exciting such hostility, it was better to give a silent or even smiling assent to the fatuous idealism to which, particularly in youth, one was so relentlessly exposed.

Louis Auchincloss

This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.

Neil Gaiman

Novelists congratulate themselves on their creation of this kind of “character” or that kind of “character,” and readers pretend to talk knowingly about “character,” but all it amounts to is that the writers are enjoying themselves writing lies and the readers are enjoying themselves reading lies. In fact, there is no such thing as character, something fixed and final. The real thing is something that novelists don’t know how to write about. Or, if they tried, the end result would never be a novel. Real people are strangely difficult to make sense out of. Even a god would have his hands full trying.

Sōseki Natsume

An exceptional woman with all the desired qualities exists only in a man's imagination.

Michael Bassey Johnson

A large piece of lead floated out of Bobby head, followed by dark chunks of what could only be pieces of Bobby's brain.The torrent started up again. It flowed steady rather than pulsed with his heart. I knew from that, and from the amount of blood, that it was that mofo vein bleeding. And probably more than a small tear if the amount of blood was telling. I thought there had to be a hole the size of Montana in that thing."Jesus Mother Mary" I said, then "Stitch!"The scrub tech slapped a needle holder into my palm, a curved needle and silk stitch clamped into the end of it. I might have closed my eyes—I've been told I do that sometimes in surgery when I'm trying to visualize something—though if so I don't remember doing it. I took that needle and aimed it into the pool of blood."Suck here Joe, right here."When I thought I could see something, something gray and not black red, I plunged the pointy end of the needle through whatever the visible tissue was and looped it out again. I cinched it down and tied it quick, then repeated the maneuver again after adjusting slightly for lighting, sweating, my own bounding heartbeat, and the regret I wasn't wearing my own diaper.We're losing, I thought.

Edison McDaniels

I do not need a scabbard to sheathe my mind.

Fuyumi Ono

He wishes he could remember everything. Anything. He doesn’t sense a bone in his body that can feel compassion or worthiness. Self-pity hides away as well, the lowest form of emotion not even capable of resting in his wrecked mind.

Christy A. Campbell

Six month of sitting home, six month of doing absolutely nothing but watching TV, going out, sleeping, getting drunk and sleeping again. Oh no, wait, I was busy with something, I was doing some renovations in my new apartment. Which legally became mine only a month ago. Yep, that's what all my life has been about, spontaneous decisions and living in the moment. Because right now technically I'm a 25-year-old illegal immigrant from Russia, four years in New York, no papers, no work authorization, no work itself. Only a crazy life filled with restaurants, shops, beauty salons, clubs and restaurants again. How is it all possible? Very simple. I used to be a stripper.

Ellie Midwood

Like the 'good' characters in literature, the sane don't have any memorable lines.

Adam Phillips Going Sane

There are monsters among us. I mean this quite literally.

Edison McDaniels

I used to go to church. I even went through a rather intense religious period when I was sixteen. But the idea of an everlasting life -- a never-ending banquet, as a stupid visiting minister to our church once appallingly described it -- filled me with a greater terror than the concept of extinction...

Louis Auchincloss

There’s so much to learn. So much to enjoy. So terribly much to be curious about. Take your life and run with it. Make a habit of being alive. This much of anything, I have learned. And am still learning.

Carew Papritz

Edmund doesn’t solve any of his grievances or personality disorders by going through the wardrobe. If anything, they're exacerbated and brought to a crisis by his experiences in Narnia. When you go to Narnia, your worries come with you. Narnia just becomes the place where you work them out and try to resolve them.

Levi Grossman

It's best not to get settled on things being a certain way, I realized. Life had a funny way if interrupting your plans.

Tracey Porter

There is no truth, only science and fiction.

Steven Brewis

Marika could feel herself cocking the trigger of a loaded gun and pointing it at herself, because the truth could be too shocking a revelation, something that would shake their lives to the core... but lies were just a dead-end alleyway that offered no way out.

Mirella Muffarotto

There are only two things in life,' Bergé said. 'Love and beauty.

Mark Zero

This was a crime of passion, but unlike most crimes of passion, it had been meticulously and diabolically well-planned.

Mark Zero

There are tales that rise like the early sun, breathe, and take on a life of their own. There are ones that flow quietly and effortlessly until time forsakes them, but there are others that fight until they find their way to the edge of reality, as if coming straight out of a dream.

Edwin Fontanez

I likes me some ‘Shit Blows Up’ fiction, don’t get me wrong.

Hal Duncan

Bergé’s yelling had attracted the attention of everyone in the Kibati hall: champagne flutes stopped halfway to heavily painted lips, eyes widened, massive diamonds groaned scornfully in their settings. It was a stationary riot.

Mark Zero

Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.

Neil Gaiman

... The use of your gift for good is your responsibility. You must decide for yourself.

Thomas Sweeney

Have you ever believed in something so completely that you were willing to give up everything and everyone in your life to protect it?

Thomas Sweeney

The destruction of something beautiful can appear so entertaining.

Thomas Sweeney

My eyes refuse to let him leave, but he stands still holding my hand, lingering for as long as possible.

Thomas Sweeney

Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we as readers have a strong subconscious wish to find them incredible.

C.S. Lewis

What would you like for your own life, Kate, if you could choose?”“Anything?”“Of course anything.”“That’s really easy, Aunty Ivy.”“Go on then.”“A straw hat...with a bright scarlet ribbon tied around the top and a bow at the back. A tea-dress like girls used to wear, with big red poppies all over the fabric. A pair of flat, white pumps, comfortable but really pretty. A bicycle with a basket on the front. In the basket is a loaf of fresh bread, cheese, fruit oh...and a bottle of sparkly wine, you know, like posh people drink. “I’m cycling down a lane. There are no lorries or cars or bicycles. No people – just me. The sun is shining through the trees, making patterns on the ground. At the end of the lane is a gate, sort of hidden between the bushes and trees. I stop at the gate, get off the bike and wheel it into the garden.“In the garden there are flowers of all kinds, especially roses. They’re my favourite. I walk down the little path to a cottage. It’s not big, just big enough. The front door needs painting and has a little stained glass window at the top. I take the food out of the basket and go through the door. “Inside, everything is clean, pretty and bright. There are vases of flowers on every surface and it smells sweet, like lemon cake. At the end of the room are French windows. They need painting too, but it doesn’t matter. I go through the French windows into a beautiful garden. Even more flowers there...and a veranda. On the veranda is an old rocking chair with patchwork cushions and next to it a little table that has an oriental tablecloth with gold tassels. I put the food on the table and pour the wine into a glass. I’d sit in the rocking chair and close my eyes and think to myself... this is my place.”From A DISH OF STONES

Valentina Hepburn

We are one.

Thomas Sweeney

I am a knight riding from tower to tower seeking a princess to rescue but all the dragons are slain, the towers are empty and the princesses taken.

Pieter Niemand

...there are women who devote themselves entirely to their families, their husbands and children, and give up cultivating their femininity. Mother rebelled against that paradigm...[Mr. Gregory's Mother]

Sveva Casati Modignani

If freedom is free and none need worry, then what blood drops for thee?

Ryan Goodrich

When you turn around, you'll see something I bet you've never seen before. If it takes your breath away, then you'll fit in nicely. If you don't feel anything, then maybe you don't belong here.

Veronica Randolph Batterson

All the great novels are about obsession and people who are obsessed.

Marty Rubin

According to Mark, it was a custom of the Roman governor during the feast of Passover to release one prisoner to the Jews, anyone for whom they asked. When Pilate asks the crowd which prisoner they would like to have released—Jesus, the preacher and traitor to Rome, or bar Abbas, the insurrectionist and murderer—the crowd demands the release of the insurrectionist and the crucifixion of the preacher. "Why?" Pilate asks, pained at the thought of having to put an innocent Jewish peasant to death. “What evil has he done?” But the crowd shouts all the louder for Jesus’s death. "Crucify him! Crucify him!" (Mark 15:1–20). The scene is absolutely nonsensical. Never mind that outside the gospels there exists not a shred of historical evidence for any such Passover custom on the part of any Roman governor. What is truly beyond belief is the portrayal of Pontius Pilate—a man renowned for his loathing of the Jews, his total disregard for Jewish rituals and customs, and his penchant for absentmindedly signing so many execution orders that a formal complaint was lodged against him in Rome—spending even a moment of his time pondering the fate of yet another Jewish rabble-rouser.

Reza Aslan

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Fiction Quotes - Page 14

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