Fiction Quotes - Page 40

What did one see if one looked in any depth into the world of this writer's fiction? Elegant self-control concealing from the world's eyes until the very last moment a state of inner disintegration and biological decay; sallow ugliness, sensuously marred and worsted, which nevertheless is able to fan its smouldering concupiscence to a pallid impotence, which from the glowing depths of the spirit draws strength to cast down a whole proud people at the foot of the Cross and set its own foot upon them as well; gracious poise and composure in the empty austere service of form; the false, dangerous life of the born deceiver, his ambition and his art which lead so soon to exhaustion ---

Thomas Mann

Because you live to love and love to live/ And because of what your heardrum will give/ Now we might love to live and live to love.

Janet Goodfriend

No respect for beauty – that was characteristic of today’s society. The works of the great masters were at most employed as ironic references, or used in advertising. Michelangelo’s ‘The Creation of Adam’, where you see a pair of jeans in place of the spark. The whole point of the picture, at least as he saw it, was that these two monumental bodies each came to an end in two index fingers that almost, but not quite, touched. There was a space between them a millimetre or so wide. And in this space – life. The sculptural size and richness of detail of this picture was simply a frame, a backdrop, to emphasise the crucial void in its centre. The point of emptiness that contained everything. And in its place a person had superimposed a pair of jeans.

John Ajvide Lindqvist

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 lik

T.C. Boyle

To have reservations is to show true leadership. To have certainty without question, to lead people to battle with no qualms, or to prosecute without hesitation are qualities of a tyrant.

Laura Kreitzer

Possibly the most debilitating deception of all is to create a god of my own making, fool myself into believing that this limp god of mine is the true God, and then construct the entirety of my life on this flamboyantly fictional character. Possibly the most devastating realization of all is when the real God shows up, and in the showing up all of this come crashing down.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

For a brief moment the previous day, I’d felt a flicker of kinship with him because of my own barrenness, but he brandished his brokenness like a sword, ready to cut anyone who displeased him because someone in Pharaoh’s household had once cut him.

Kristen Reed

My nation, as all nations, is becoming a land without peace, without thought, without mind, Madam Abbess. We are suffocating our spirits in commercial and material things. This is not envy," said Mr. Konishi earnestly. "I am a rich man, with much business, so I have succeeded in all these things, but I know that they are empty.

Rumer Godden

The human heartIs unknowable.But in my birthplaceThe flowers still smellThe same as always.

Rumer Godden

The nation has been turned upside down and inside out. The country that was once discovered by people seeking religious freedom is now oppressing religious rights. It has been a slow train rumbling down the track of destruction since the 1960's. It started with the removal of the Bible from our public schools. Next the generation known as the 'love generation' opened the door for the approval of sex outside of marriage. For every ten years since then, it's been a slippery slope of materialism, I got mine, what can you do for me, and money is power. "We as a nation have stopped focusing on God and family and replaced them with money and success. Parents are teaching their children to do whatever it takes to get ahead...just don't get caught. If you do, find someone to blame it on.

Rick Mayhew

True beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.

Ross Turner

Normality is much less captivating than the extraordinary.

Erin Forbes

I held a brief debate with myself as to whether I should change my ordinary attire for something smarter. At last I concluded it would be a waste of labour. "Doubtless," though I, "she is some stiff old maid ; for though the daughter of Madame Reuter, she may well number upwards of forty winters; besides, if it were otherwise, if she be both young and pretty, I am not handsome, and no dressing can make me so, therefore I'll go as I am." And off I started, cursorily glancing sideways as I passed the toilet-table, surmounted by a looking-glass: a thin irregular face I saw, with sunk, dark eyes under a large, square forehead, complexion destitute of bloom or attraction; something young, but not youthful, no object to win a lady's love, no butt for the shafts of Cupid.

Charlotte Brontë

Think not of the fragility of life, but of the power of books, when mere words can change our lives simply by being next to each other.

Kamand Kojouri

Wherever man did not settle, the world was not owned.It was not wanted.In time of course this was bound to change, for there is never enough it seems.

Ross Turner

She was shocked when she followed her aunt and cousin down into the city proper. The streets were crawling with people, all hurrying to and fro, mindless of one another. They brushed by with barely even a glance, stepping down into the busy roads between horse drawn buses and draymen’s carts with such confidence, seemingly oblivious that they could be run down at any moment. Children dodged in and out amongst them, ragamuffins all, some barefoot.

Lillian White

The chaos of their voices registers as a single, overwhelming force cutting off her ability to reason, and all she wants is to get as far away from people as possible.

Zainab Omaki

Women create an idealized, hopeful vision for the future to inspire other women. Fiction and fantasy are the crucial first steps to changing the world.

Maya Rodale

Darla shook her head, a small smirk on her lips. “You’re such a mom,” she told Katherine.Katherine stared at her, puzzled. “You’re a mom, too,” she said softly.“No, I gave birth. That doesn’t make me a mom. Not like you.”A look passed between the two women like none they had ever shared before. For a split second, Katherine felt a slight connection. “Well, you rest. I’ll check on you later.” She turned and left the room, a funny, unexplainable feeling inside her.

Deanna Lynn Sletten

Women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems.

Virginia Woolf

Life is never just in your own hands ...

Jasmine Sparks

Simple survival is never as ordinary as it seems!

Jasmine Sparks

You know, one of the interesting things you find about writing fiction is that any fiction you write has to be political. Otherwise, it goes into the realm of fantasy. So like, if you write about a woman in America in 1910, if you don’t write that she can’t really control her property, that she can’t—doesn’t have any say over her children, that she can’t vote—if you don’t put that in it, then it’s a fantasy. Like, well, how is her life informed? That’s true about everybody. If you write about black people, you write about white men, I mean, it has to be political. A lot of people don’t realize that, it seems.

Walter Mosley

I am a politician which means I am a liar and a crook. When I am not kissing babies I am stealing their lollypops.

Tom Clancy

Let’s de-bunk some of this, shall we? Myth 1– Kings and Queens are divine beings – rubbish. Kings and queens of old were murdering bastards who ruled with a rod of iron. Myth 2 – the rich prosper out of godliness – more rubbish. They gained their wealth by royal patronage and taxing and stealing from the masses. Myth 3 - the poor are poor because they’re depraved – yet more rubbish. They’re poor because of their naivety and childlike belief in, oh yes, Kings and Queens, the Church and the order of things. Finally, Myth 4 - women are evil and deliberately seductive – the biggest nonsense of all. Women are sexually attractive to men because they are the opposite sex to men; it’s not hard to see, is it? It’s the same for every species on the planet, you can see it in any mating ritual on the Discovery channel but this truth has been reversed and buried under the eternal lie fostered upon us by the church. That’s what the bible has achieved and that’s why our society is divided and divided again. That’s why we are never working as one, because religion was designed to divide and rule the masses,” she broke off and looked deliberately round the room, “but the big question is, for what purpose and by whom?

Arun D. Ellis

And at that moment the alligators burst into the room.

Genevieve Cogman

Yes. She’s correct. We’re not friends. We are lufenes actually. But she’s had an overdose of magic, which has seemingly rendered her empathetically impotent.

Jessica O'Toole

Nobody ever drowned in their own sweat.

Veronica Rossi

Some women have kissed—and some are kissing—a lot of frogs, even though the very first man that they have each kissed was and is still a prince.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I'm starting to think you like prisons," "And that you have the worst taste in men.

Victoria Aveyard

Jack picked a piece of mint from his glass and chewed on it for a second. “I’m curious,” he said,“is telling someone to relax ever helpful? It’s like saying ‘breathe’ to someone who ishyperventilating or ‘swallow’ to a person who’s choking. It’s a completely useless admonition.

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

She's so the same and yet so the incomparable!

Pritam Banikk

I have not yet tranquillised myself enough to see Frederica.

Jane Austen

Wainscott, Deepspace Operations Group,’ said the man. ‘Wasn’t here, don’t exist, pleased to meet you.

Toby Frost

Don't mind Russ," he says. "He's a good kid underneath all those holes, although it's a wonder he doesn't spring a leak when he drinks

Sara Gruen

Dr. Jules Hilbert: Hell Harold, you could just eat nothing but pancakes if you wanted.Harold Crick: What is wrong with you? Hey, I don't want to eat nothing but pancakes, I want to live! I mean, who in their right mind in a choice between pancakes and living chooses pancakes?Dr. Jules Hilbert: Harold, if you pause to think, you'd realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led... and, of course, the quality of the pancakes.

Zach Helm

Martin, at my age, eroticism is reduced to enjoying caramel custard and looking at widows' necks.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

To the person who believes this- as the western world did up until a few centuries ago- this physical, sensible world is good because it proceeds from a divine source. The artist usually knows this by instinct; his senses, which are used to penetrating the concrete, tell him so. When Conrad said that his aim as an artist was to render the highest possible justice to the visible universe, he was speaking with the novelist's surest instinct. The artist penetrates the concrete world in order to find at its depths the image of its source, the image of ultimate reality. This in no way hinders his perception of evil but rather sharpens it, for only when the natural world is seen as good does evil become intelligible as a destructive force and a necessary result of our freedom.

Flannery O'Connor

Kiana loved birds," Breena told him late one dusky evening. "When she was just a few summers old, she would run beneath them as they flew, her chubby arms stretched out as if tmo take flight alongside them." She sniffed and wrapped her arms around her stomach. "A few weeks before the attack, she told me that she was still going to fly one day. 'I look at the birds, and I see freedom,' she said. 'To soar above the hurt of the world, to be too high for the wars of men to touch you: that is what it means to fly.

Elizabeth Wilson

There are moment of sadness and moment of joy. This is life.

Beth Cohen

Exhaustion was pressing upon and overpowering her. "Good-by--because I love you." He did not know; he did not understand. He would never understand. Perhaps Doctor Mandelet would have understood if she had seen him--but it was too late; the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone.She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again.

Kate Chopin

... Within the mind, especially the mind under great stress... boundaries of space and time are meaningless, and the... interior self lives by other rules and in other dimensions.

Frederick Busch

The world was ersatz and actual, forged and faked, by ourselves and unseen others. Daring to attempt to absolutely sort fake from real was a folly that would call down tigers or hiccups to cure us of our recklessness. The effort was doomed, for it too much pointed past the intimate boundaries of our necessary fictions.

Jonathan Lethem

fiction is necessary to life - not only as books but as dreams, dreams that frame the world and give it meaning.

Siri Hustvedt

I remember when I was twenty-five,” he said. “No client comes to you when you’re twenty-five. It’s like when you are looking for a doctor. You don’t want the new one that just graduated. You don’t want the very old one, the one shaking, the one twenty years past his prime. You want the seasoned one who has done it so many times he can do it in his sleep though. Same thing with attorneys.

Daniel Amory

Fictions are merely frozen dreams, linked images with some semblance of structure. They are not to be trusted, no more than the people who create them.

Neil Gaiman

It was as if hell itself had taken human form and come up from the abyss.

Brima Lamin & Chantale Wesley-Lamin

No one lives long in a war. I don't want to lose you as well.

Sanchit Gupta

No one lives long in a war.

Sanchit Gupta

He led her back to the house, the perfume from the acacia clinging to her. The djinn was supposed to live in the scent of the acacia blossom, making themselves visible only to the young in order to entrap them in otherworldly world.

Nadeem Aslam

A daughter, a wife, a grandson,' You could say this place took away all I had. I could easily appear to be one of those unfortunate white men you hear about, who thought too lovingly of the other races and civilization of the world, who left his own country in the West to set up a home among them in the East, and was ruined as a result, paying dearly for his foolish mistake. His life smashed to pieces by the barbarians surrounding him.

Nadeem Aslam

Afghanistan had collapsed and everyone's life now lies broken at different levels within the rubble.

Nadeem Aslam

Most of the time, we see only what we want to see, or what others tell us to see, instead of really investigate to see what is really there. We embrace illusions only because we are presented with the illusion that they are embraced by the majority. When in truth, they only become popular because they are pounded at us by the media with such an intensity and high level of repetition that its mere force disguises lies and truths. And like obedient schoolchildren, we do not question their validity and swallow everything up like medicine. Why? Because since the earliest days of our youth, we have been conditioned to accept that the direction of the herd, and authority anywhere — is always right.

Suzy Kassem

If [Patricia Highsmith] saw an acquaintance walking down the sidewalk she would deliberately cross over so as to avoid them. When she came in contact with people, she realised she split herself into many different, false, identities, but, because she loathed lying and deceit, she chose to absent herself completely rather than go through such a charade. Highsmith interpreted this characteristic as an example of 'the eternal hypocrisy in me', rather her mental shape-shifting had its source in her quite extraordinary ability to empathise. Her imaginative capacity to subsume her own identity, while taking on the qualities of those around her - her negative capability, if you like - was so powerful that she said she often felt like her inner visions were far more real than the outside world. She aligned herself with the mad and the miserable, 'the insane man who feels himself one with all mankind, all life, because in losing his mind, he has lost his ego, his self-ness', yet realised that such a state inspired her fiction. Her ambition, she said, was to write about the underlying sickness of this 'daedal planet' and capture the essence of the human condition: eternal disappointment.

Andrew Wilson

She hoped Alistair would prove to be more than she imagined. But, unfortunately, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that people weren’t what they once were.

Ross Turner

A friendship like theirs was hard to come by, and when such a thing is found, it is often even harder to hold on to.But, as so few come to learn, absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder.

Ross Turner

For us Deewan Bhai, whatever it takes

Sanchit Gupta

The strangest thing about demons is that they come to love you. As much as they try to murder the very core of you when you first meet, they become your closest companions. I never asked for this devil on my shoulder. But my eyes are burning and I’m not alone. If you see a red gaze at midheaven, look away. It’s exactly as they say: hell is a hungry place.

F.K. Preston

Come to me! Let me take you to a real world of fictions!

Lukhman Pambra

I love you, Karla,” I said when we were alone again. “I loved you the first second I saw you. I think I’ve loved you for as long as there’s been love in the world. I love your voice. I love your face. I love your hands. I love everything you do, and I love the way you do everything. It feels like magic when you touch me. I love the way your mind works, and the things you say. And even though it’s all true, all that, I don’t really understand it, and I can’t explain it – to you or to myself. I just love you. I just love you with all my heart. You do what God should do: you give me a reason to live. You give me a reason to love the world.

Gregory David Roberts

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Fiction Quotes - Page 40

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