Fiction Writing Quotes - Page 2

I long for some connection, to the real and those who love them, and hope that my fiction can reach beyond the veil, that I might touch someone and make them feel something…or something.

Shannon Celebi

Writing is a solitary business. It’s just you and your characters and a blank page you need to fill.

Shannon Celebi

Family is a permanent adhesive that creates a lifetime bond.

Conrad Brooks

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

Misunderstandings arise only in undefined relationships

Anuradha Bhattacharyya

That's what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again.

Kelly Marcel & Sue Smith

Sometimes a night of over-eating leaves you hungry for something you can't name. An emptiness haunted me. An emptiness I didn't have a name for until I met Jeb. Now, I' m starving.

Kim Briggs

Fiction writers, magicians, politicians and priests are the only people rewarded for entertaining us with their lies

Bangambiki Habyarimana

In almost all other professions a man must be able to observe carefully and report accurately what he has seen. Those qualifications are unnecessary for journalists, however, since their job is to write sensational stories that sell newspapers.

Robert Anton Wilson

You know this has really affected my ability to trust myself. No matter what happened in my life, I was always able to trust myself. My instincts. Two men in a row carrying on indiscretions makes me feel like I made up some story. Almost like a fiction, Iwrote in my mind that had a beginning, middle and end. It feels like I manufactured some ideal life that was a made-up invention that I needed to believe was the truth.

Jacqueline Simon Gunn

It is generally supposed, and not least by Catholics, that the Catholic who writes fiction is out to use fiction to prove the truth of the Faith, or at the least, to prove the existence of the supernatural. He may be. No one certainly can be sure of his low motives except as they suggest themselves in his finished work, but when the finished work suggests that pertinent actions have been fraudulently manipulated or overlooked or smothered, whatever purposes the writer started out with have already been defeated. What the fiction writer will discover, if he discovers anything at all, is that he himself cannot move or mold reality in the interests of an abstract truth. The writer learns, perhaps more quickly than the reader, to be humble in the face of what-is. What-is is all he has to do with; the concrete is his medium; and he will realize eventually that fiction can transcend its limitations only by staying within them.

Flannery O'Connor

The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality depend by contact with mystery. Fiction should be both canny and uncanny. In a good deal of popular criticism, there is the notion operating that all fiction has to be about the Average Man, and has to depict average ordinary everyday life, that every fiction writer must produce what used to be called "a slice of life." But if life, in that sense, satisfied us, there would be no sense in producing literature at all.

Flannery O'Connor

I'll call any length of fiction a story, whether it be a novel or a shorter piece, and I'll call anything a story in which specific characters and events influence each other to form a meaningful narrative. I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. Then they find themselves writing a sketch with an essay woven through it, or an essay with a sketch woven through it, or an editorial with a character in it, or a case history with a moral, or some other mongrel thing. When they realize that they aren't writing stories, they decide that the remedy for this is to learn something that they refer to as "the technique of the short story" or "the technique of the novel." Technique in the minds of many is something rigid, something like a formula that you impose on the material; but in the best stories it is something organic, something that grows out of the material, and this being the case, it is different for every story of any account that has ever been written.

Flannery O'Connor

The fiction writer is an observer, first, last, and always, but he cannot be an adequate observer unless he is free from uncertainty about what he sees. Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute. The Catholic fiction writer is entirely free to observe. He feels no call to take on the duties of God or to create a new universe. He feels perfectly free to look at the one we already have and to show exactly what he sees.

Flannery O'Connor

You may ask, why not simply call this literature Christian? Unfortunately, the word Christian is no longer reliable. It has come to mean anyone with a golden heart. And a golden heart would be a positive interference in the writing of fiction.

Flannery O'Connor

Writing fiction feels like an adventurous act, nudging aside reality a word at a time.

James Van Pelt

Perhaps the critics are right: this generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation--who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him--but he must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope--qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for, and are not commonly come by with much ease, either by a critic's formula or by a critic's yearning.

Bill Styron

A smart person is not one that knows the answers, but one who knows where to find them...

William Petersen

I’ve never pondered my own life until I started watching fictional ones fight for theirs.

Jennifer Renson

Expand your world. (Stories about wizards and spells) are very frequently about power relationships...

Margaret Atwood

Without thinking, I step a little closer, reaching out slowly to slide a fingertip over the largest petal of the lily tattoo on her lower back. Instantly a vibration moves up my arm, and I swear the mark on my hand burns against my skin.I clench my fingers into a fist, but I don’t step away.“Did you feel that?” she asks.I shake my head. “I don’t know.” I feel so much, always so much.She takes my hand and brings it to her side again, resting it on the violets. I look at thepurple flowers between my fingers and feel the heat of her skin, the way it slides beneath my palm, soft as silk. And that vibration moves through my arm again.Her breath quickens.I find myself moving closer as her blue eyes go wide with wonder. My heart stutters and my chest aches with some unknown need.“Are you doing this?” I ask. Is she making me want this?“No,” she breathes. The smell of her turns to spice, sharp and warm, and I know I’m sensing her now, even through the block in the house.We stand like that for an eternity, still as statues on the outside, but inside I’m running, running toward a place I’ve never been. I should be terrified. But all I feel is strength. Rightness.And then Kara moves, her hands skimming up my chest, testing the boundaries. Her palms slide to my shoulders, her fingers tracing the line of the muscles in my arms, down to my waist. She grips my shirt, stretching it a little, waiting for me to tell her to stop. But I watch her lift it, let her pull it up, raising my arms, and I even take the last of it off myself, dropping it to the floor.We breathe, staring at each other.The vibrations move between us. My left arm buzzes with them. I think she’s doing it. Whatever’s happening, it’s her.I reach up and brush my marked knuckles across her cheek, amazed at the feel of her, the way her eyes seem to see everything, the way she pulls me into her. I can’t seem to remember why I shouldn’t kiss her. And kiss her. And . . .I kiss her, taking her face in both hands, skimming my thumb over her jaw as she leans into the touch, reaching out to curl her fingers around the back of my neck. I have to remind myself to breathe. I need more of her. The emotions roll over me in a rush, a tangle of sensation and movement, heat and sugar and heady aromas.I grip her tighter.Her nails dig into my shoulders. My hands slide down her spine. The kiss deepens, goes on forever, until I can barely see sense. I explore her shape, the feel of her ribs, the textures and taste of her skin on my tongue as I kiss her neck, her shoulders, her chest. As I draw trembling gasps from her lips, she grips me so hard it hurts.Our bodies mesh. Our breath mingles in frenzied desperation. Nothing else exists except her. Her warmth. Her spice. Her.

Rachel A. Marks

Fantasy or fiction is just a persons secret life. A world they want to be in. The only diffrence between them and you, is that they wrote it down in detail, printed it and shared it with the world.

Mariana Hak

We share a bond. We do everything together. We have a piece of strong, invisible thread connecting us. It’s indestructible – it can never be broken. The thread is the key item that links us together. We understand each other.

Erica Sehyun Song

When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.

Ann Patchett

Action is the pulse of any good story, but the character is the heart. If the action has no consequence to the character, the story loses heart.

Linda W. Yezak

Fueled by my inspiration, I ran across the room to steal the cup of coffee the bookshelf had taken prisoner. Lapping the black watery brew like a hyena, I tossed the empty cup aside. I then returned to the chair to continue my divine act of creation. Hot blood swished in my head as my mighty pen stole across the page.

Roman Payne

If you haven't cried at least once while writing a chapter of your inspirational book, then you have to ask yourself if your're writing fiction.

Shannon L. Alder

The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.

Iain M. Banks

It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.

Robert Hass

You can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything.

James Baldwin

Ah, ya, omong-omong, aku sangat merindukanmu. Apa kau merindukanku juga, mmm?

Jee

Entah mengapa, mendadak dia merasa bahwa berkenalan dengan si pemilik nama itu sepertinya akan menyenangkan.

Jee

Jika kita menyukai sesuatu, bagaimanapun keadaannya, kita hanya akan tetap menyukainya. Rasa suka itu tidak akan terpengaruh oleh faktor lain. Suka, ya, suka, dan akan begitu walau dilihat dari sudut pandang mana saja.

Jee

You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are.

Joss Whedon

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Fiction Writing Quotes - Page 2

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