Fiction Quotes

I belong everywhere and nowhere, and I alone can save two worlds.

~ Jonathan Friesen

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

Does Carthage even have forests? Did Virgil know for sure or was it just convenient for his story? Virgil was a professional liar. This would not be the only place where he pruned the truth until it was as artificial as an espaliered pear tree against a wall, forced into an expedient shape and bearing the demanded fruit.

~ Kij Johnson

Upon reaching the preserve, everyone knew that the explanation of this incident was dreadfully imminent. With parents already on edge, the looming task of crafting a story out of thin air was one that was not only sickening, but would place a larger wedge between father and son.

~ K.n. Smith

Narrative secrets are not the same as human mysteries, a lesson that novelists seem fates to forget, again and again; the former quickly confess themselves, and fall silent, while the true mysteries go on speaking.

~ James Wood

I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors. If they have something to say, they will sooner or later find readers; if not, they won’t. . . . I very much love those mysterious volumes, both ancient and modern, that have no definite author but have had and continue to have an intense life of their own. They seem to me a sort of nighttime miracle, like the gifts of the Befana, which I waited for as a child. . . . True miracles are the ones whose makers will never be known. . . . Besides, isn’t it true that promotion is expensive? I will be the least expensive author of the publishing house. I’ll spare you even my presence.

~ Elena Ferrante

I look up at the ceiling, at all the hardcover fiction. So very few people want it. It is operating as insulation rather than stock. The argument rages on about whether it is better to have books or ebooks, but while everyone gets heated about the choices, the hardcover fiction molders quietly away.

~ Deborah Meyler

The Dark Stranger nodded in agreement knowing the time had come for the boys to know more, but it would not be tonight. He grabbed Kinsu’s arm, nodded again, and then ran off into the night. With Chase and Rhee standing behind Kinsu, whose hair was briefly whipped from the air flying from the Dark Stranger’s cape, they understood that they were all alone. They had no clues to a dramatic puzzle which had simply been forced upon them. “Unbelievable,” said Kinsu. And they all walked away feeling somber, drained, and still wondering, who was that girl?

~ K.n. Smith

And in the absence of even a hint of an exchange, Joaquin spun around and lunged at Ross, grabbed him by the throat, and knocked him down. With dry, brittle leaves and debris suddenly thrust upward, the two were covered in a dark, hazy hell as they pursued a violent struggle for what seemed like an eternity. As he gained his footing, Ross shot back with a punch to Joaquin’s head followed by several body punches. Joaquin stumbled backward and fell giving Ross those precious, few seconds required for escape.

~ K.n. Smith

She reached behind her back and pulled out slender, black nunchucks and simply invited them to come get her. Their eyes could barely follow the chucks as they circled around her shoulders and torso slapping back and forth, and up and under, while she remained focused and composed with her eastern, tomboy flair.

~ K.n. Smith

Fiction cannot betray the truth. Though it must try...As said by Ernest Hemingway in Blast...The first short story in Bullet.

~ Christopher J. Pumphrey

I am the prosecutor. I represent the state. I am here to present to you the evidence of a crime. Together you will weigh this evidence. You will deliberate upon it. You will decide if it proves the defendant's guilt.

~ Scott Turow

Can you even have human nature if you don’t have the capacity to feel?” I ask. “Do you mean on some kind of existentialist ‘what are we if not the things we feel’ kind of way?” I don’t know what he means by existentialist. I say as much. He laughs. I entertain the idea of stabbing him for several minutes.

~ Ellis Adler

Kukurukuuu,’ our big rooster crowed as usual and it nearly put me off my sleep. My eyes were neither open nor close. In trying to go back to sleep I rolled to both sides on my small wooden bed, covered with a mat. The room was partially dark and warm, sleepless rats busy under my bed in search of food.

~ Obehi Peter Ewanfoh

When strange objects shapes the landscape, we get fiction

~ Umair Siddiqui

I have inflammation of the imagination.

~ Lera Auerbach

I will not be a victim. I will not think like a victim. I am going to avenge all those little girls. I am going to win.

~ Carolyn Lee Adams

Keep your spirits up, for the demons are scared of salvation.

~ Hamsa Priya Selvam

Halcyons are never supportive of dream hoverers and their associates.

~ Hamsa Priya Selvam

I don't know how the Wolfman knows all this, but he's not wrong. My warm cheeks turn scalding hot. Your shame is a good sign. You may break sooner than I thought. The breaking is good. It purifies.

~ Carolyn Lee Adams

When he unleashes on her everything falls together. Like a crick in the neck snapped into place, the boy's brain pops and is put right. It is a beautiful undoing, a beautiful becoming. He doesn't stop to think about it when the punches follow her down to the ground. He doesn't stop to notice when she goes still or when the pool of blood under her head pillows out into a great, liquid heart. He doesn't stop until he's pulled off her and he doesn't start to think again until that night, when he's back at home. For hours and hours his brain stays beautifully popped into place.

~ Carolyn Lee Adams

Wolfman clears everything off the table except his gun. That he keeps close at hand. There is a sense of ceremony about his actions. My stomach tightens up. We are about to begin.

~ Carolyn Lee Adams

When you come to a detour, take it.

~ Jack Dancer

I know you, Ruth Ann Carver. I know you better than you know yourself. You think you do things right. You think you're a paragon of right living. This is a self-told lie, one bolstered by your coddling parents and grandparents.

~ Carolyn Lee Adams

..now, seated hunched over paper in a pool of Anglepoised light, I no longer want to be anything except what who I am. Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each 'I', every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world.

~ Salman Rushdie

God don't give out certain.

~ Jeffery Deaver

I seek to take my audience on an emotional roller-coaster ride, a journey of laughter and tears and every sentiment in between.

~ Marc Royston

He looks up and up and up to get to her face. His mama's a tall lady, and he's only seven. He's overwhelmed by red. Red heels, red nails, red lips, red hair, red eyes. So help him, the boy has always thought his mama's copper-colored eyes damn near shined red. He looks into those eyes and knows she's come home funny.

~ Carolyn Lee Adams

It was like a commercial for laundry detergent or tampons or a prescription medication with death listed as a possible side effect.

~ Carolyn Lee Adams

Dream It, Believe In It, And Achieve It.

~ Black Barbie

But what reality was ever made by realists?

~ Richard Flanagan

If you want to understand the inner workings of the human mind, read good fiction.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

No one in Cattaraugus had much idea of what an artist’ colony might be. “Art” itself was viewed with suspicion, scorn. There was the sense, as people like my mother conveyed it, of a fraud, a hustle. “Art” was putting something over on someone, the way politicians did. “Art” was a sorry excuse for not being productive, useful. “Art” was vanity, pretension.

~ Lauren Kelly

Novels are just very, very, very long lies. That is to say, you’ve got to get your story straight!

~ Blair Thornburgh

Poverty is everywhere, Zarish. People should have the courage to get out of the vicious circle of it.

~ Sara Naveed

People like Nicholas are always gonna be around, roots of disaster. But if we fail to rescue them (Zach and Chanel), that is when they actually win.

~ Hamsa Priya Selvam

It will be worth it if I am remembered, if not flatteringly, then at least with some small amount of accuracy.

~ Patrick Rothfuss

There is only one misery . . . not to be saints.

~ Léon Bloy

There are people who believe in the basic goodness of human nature. I believe in the basic evil of human nature. ~ Aarush Kashyap

~ Kirtida Gautam