Fiction Quotes

What?

~ Vicki Wilson

I believe that all things happen under the watchful eye of God and the lessons we learn along the way only serve to make us stronger.

~ Nancy B. Brewer

It is not my job to explain the story or understand the story or reduce it to a phrase or offer it as being a story about any specific person, place, or thing. My job is to have been true enough to the world of my story that I was able to present it as a forceful and convincing drama. Every story is a kind of puzzle. Many have obvious solutions, and some have no solution at all. We write to present questions, sometimes complicated questions, not to offer easy or not-so-easy answers. Do not be misled by the limited vocabulary the American marketplace uses to describe the possibilities for story and drama. If we’re really writing we are exploring the unnamed emotional facets of the human heart. Not all emotions, not all states of mind have been named. Nor are all the names we have been given always accurate. The literary story is a story that deals with the complicated human heart with an honest tolerance for the ambiguity in which we live. No good guys, no bad guys, just guys: that is, people bearing up the crucible of their days and certainly not always—if ever—capable of articulating their condition.

~ Ron Carlson

It was only much later that he was made flesh and blood [in the Gospels] on paper. Thus Christ was created as a literary creation.

~ Paul Louis Couchoud

Not much of a childhood, Cass. When did you get to play?”With a frown, she said, “I played.”“You took apart your robot dog.

~ Michelle O'leary

Sin’s cold, calculating, and dangerous. She scares the shit outta me. I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley and that’s the truth. Compared to her, you’re a damned Sun angel.”“You just don’t know her,” Cass said in a soft voice, her mouth curving the slightest bit. “She’s really very sweet.”“Sure,” Nick scoffed. “Sweet as sugar. Let’s get back to why you won’t let me put my hands on you.

~ Michelle O'leary

I had finally become aware of how much I was capable of, how little I had to lose, and how deep into Douglas's soft sand I had sunk. Magellan's letters, which Douglas had recited, had become part of my being. It was as if I was right there with Magellan, following every curve of his pen as he wrote down his words to his beloved ones confiding his secret. I had become the ink, and the tip was tattooing my path. I was going to follow his dream, but still, I wished I knew why.

~ Celma Ribeiro

He told himself she wasn’t really such a bad person, she was just a pest, she was sticky, there was something misplaced in her make-up, something that kept her from fading clear of people when they wanted to be in the clear.

~ David Goodis

It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children, good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world, and eldest sons who waste their inheritance on riotous living and go into exile to live with the swine, that children learn or mislearn both what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the drama into which they have been born and what the ways of the world are.

~ Alasdair Macintyre

. . .but he'd seen elite warriors go down in flames enough times to struggle with the sovereignty of God yet yield to it

~ Ronie Kendig

I could hardly get to sleep for dreaming of revenge.

~ Ralph Ellison

If his relative success hadn't made him happy, it had, on average, made him less unhappy.

~ Adelle Waldman

I knew that it was impossible for us to be kept apart for too long.

~ Erica Sehyun Song

Ridley nodded. 'She told me I couldn't ever tell General Harding or anybody else. Told me I wouldn't be safe.' 'Safe?' Uncle Bob stopped rocking and took the pipe from between his teeth. 'She started in talkin' 'bout you bein' safe, sir?' Ridley nodded again, and that's when Uncle Bob grinned. 'Well, shoot . . . you ain't lost her yet, sir. Not altogether, anyhow. Any female goes to talkin' 'bout you bein' safe . . . hmmph. There still be somethin' left in her heart for ya.

~ Tamera Alexander

He had a bad habit of initially zeroing in on one or two things he liked about every new girl he found himself interested in, as if to justify his attraction.

~ Adelle Waldman

When people pose the question, are you “coxom”, Tom Conrad? I like to pose a question back at them: Is J.K. Rowling actually a witch? Is Thomas Harris the no. 1 serial killer in the the US, did Yann Martell really spend a lifetime eating pie?Of course, as far as I know J.K. Rowling is not a witch, but instead is a rather lovely and talented writer. As for that Thomas Harris (equally talented), I very much suspect he isn’t actually a serial killer at all, or if he is, he’s involved in the biggest case of double bluff… ever! As for Yann Martell, well, as everyone with half a brain knows his book is actually concerned with a mathematical constant, so ignore the dumb pie joke. Hm :/

~ Tom Conrad

whatever beauty she thought she might have possessed she realized had only been through her husband's assessment of her

~ Molly Ringwald

Does bad luck come in 3's...or is it multiples of 3?

~ Tara Ford

I believe a family just isn’t complete without skeletons. My dearest momma clean bit off my daddy’s nose right around the time they divorced.

~ Cole Alpaugh

You aren't allowed out of the graveyard -it's aren't, by the way, not amn't, not these days-because it's only in the graveyard that we can keep you safe. This is where you live and this is where those who love you can be found. Outside would not be safe for you. Not yet.

~ Neil Gaiman

Our pendants glowed in unison and I understood that they represented us – Siren and human intertwined for eternity.

~ Erica Sehyun Song

Write about the thing that scares you most or your most private confession and you'll never have a problem coming up with decent fiction.

~ Don Roff

The claim at the heart of this book has been carefully researched by several generations of scholars and is orthodox in academic circles, if not beyond. Christians under the Roman Empire were neither constantly persecuted nor martyred in huge numbers for their faith. They were prosecuted from time to time for alleged sedition, holding illegal meetings or refusing to sacrifice to the emperor. They were, like other convicts, sometimes tortured and executed in horrible ways. They seem to have been regarded by many Romans with distaste as a particularly silly superstition. But Christian stories of thousands of individual and mass martyrdoms over centuries have at best a limited basis in historical fact, and in many cases are sheer fiction.

~ Teresa Morgan

I watched her shadow merge with the darker colours of the deep sea.

~ Erica Sehyun Song

Noriega wound up like a baseball pitcher on top of the bed and hurled the small gun, but was low and outside for a ball. His tight-fitting house dress was bunched up high on his chubby thighs, exposing olive drab underwear.I see London, I see France, I see a crazy dictator’s underpants!Chase’s thoughts raced.

~ Cole Alpaugh

Limp finally spoke. “Do you think you could kill a person and not get all crazy about it?

~ Cole Alpaugh

Bearing witness from the sides of the room, ten or more lepers shouted at the bizarre scene, “Diable! Diable!” And then chants of some sort, or prayers, followed by more shouts of “Diable!” They were hurling these words at Moreau like stones.

~ Cole Alpaugh

I beam back at her. Fuck the surgery, fuck the kids, fuck the men in our lives or no longer in our lives. This is sweet. When she catches up with me, I say, How many, just how many forty-plus women would do that?We gaze back up at the face bleeding into the chute we’ve just skied. We *did* that, I crow. Someone should love us just for that. --Hangfire

~ Claudia Putnam

The monkey liked most humans. They left food cans outside their homes for his family to rummage through in the morningsun. Some yelled and threw sticks, but were slow and didn’t bite. Humans were mostly harmless.

~ Cole Alpaugh

Kids never jumped head first from the top ledge. Never. It seemed forever beforeStoney came back to the surface. Most of the white bubbles had already disappeared.

~ Cole Alpaugh

Whenever I’d get howlin’ over something, he’d grab my ass up from wherever I was and head straight for the john. Momma said my head would get banged up along the way, but she said itwas probably bein’ dunked under water that made me stupid.

~ Cole Alpaugh

Six nervous wives at the sink, each quiet as a queen on a chessboard.

~ Genie Frisbee

The beer gave Penn a headache immediately, she blinked like a mermaid struck by sunshine.

~ Genie Frisbee

Allegedly, allegedly I say, the R.G.A. were extremely miffed of portrait painted of their monarch, King Tingaling XX, by Master. Portrait apparently, as it’s yet t’be unveiled, depicts King Tingaling XX in rather compromisin’ position with a pineapple, a wad of cash and his favourite pig, Buttercup.

~ Elias Zapple

Grandpa said that we could solve a lot of the world’s problems if we considered cats and dogs edible. Like the neighbor’s dog who goes to the bathroom in his flower garden. And know what else?

~ Cole Alpaugh

It’d been a long time since they’d been together, but as close as they were physically, they’d never been so far apart in every other way.

~ Jennifer Faye

She smiled sinisterly. Light mist started to slowly swirl around us. All I could see was her, the tall rocks and the white wall. She beckoned to me. I took a step and another. I was now ankle deep into the water. The mysterious girl smiled like a predator.

~ Erica Sehyun Song

I was slightly thankful when Mom finally came out and unlocked the car. It was warm and toasty inside and it smelt like home. There was not the slightest smell of something that didn’t belong home.

~ Erica Sehyun Song

A couple hours went by, and the storm began to turn back to the sea. The dark clouds rolled away, leaving white, fluffy ones in their place. We were safe, and the rock in the distance was still there. We stepped out of the car and walked over to the rock, noticing the families of seals were back again. The seals were strong and ready to make it through any storm that would fall their way. My parents’ love was still there; that is what love means. I envy that love, and I hoped to find it someday... and I did.

~ Joseph Mcginnis

They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Thainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fukú Americanus, or more colloquially, fukú-generally a curse or a doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and Doom of the New World.

~ Junot Díaz