Literary Fiction Quotes

I came to the party with the sole purpose of getting completely shit-faced, to be perfectly honest. That was it, that was The Plan from the very beginning. I wanted more than anything that ever regrettable, forgetting-everything-you-learned-as-a-toddler kind of wasted that only either the completely stupid venture into or the complete novice (given how naive I was I think I fall more into the latter category). It was a very simple plan, but I like to think the simplest ones tend to be the most effective. The Plan sure as hell didn't involve everything else that happened that night, as all of that occurred quite naturally on its own.

~ J.c. Joranco

She opened her eyes and looked into his rather intensely. What? Alex asked. This cannot be. What can't be? Alex asked her, more bafflement in his voice this time. I have been reading people all my life. I can even read cats and dogs. I've been doing it all my life and i've been here longer than the two of you put together. And? Alex wanted to get to the point. Whatever the truth may be, he just wanted to hear it, wanted it on the table before them so he could get this over with and they can go home. AND.....you are the first person that has nothing for me to see. And here I was hoping you'd say I'd win the lottery or get married to a supermodel or something. Alex said, starting to laugh. You don't understand. I don't see anything, anything at all. There is nothing to you, nothing but what I see before me. So....what does that mean? It means you don't exist.

~ J.c. Joranco

As the sun went down outside, the television screen started completely lighting up the room in obnoxiously bright colors at hyperactive speeds. The conversation had been slowly rising in volume and frequency, as everyone started becoming more delinquent and the social boundaries slowly wore away. I don't remember what any of them said because I wasn't honestly paying any attention. I was focusing on my own misery and trying to numb the inner demons, the ugly things Thomas claimed came from the Outside World. Yet, to me, it wasn't outside, but rather INSIDE, as in my own head. I kept hearing Charley's voice from bits and pieces of conversations we had, laughter that I'll never hear ever again.

~ J.c. Joranco

It was the sunlight coming through the window that woke Alex up, mother nature's own alarm clock rudely snapped him back to consciousness. The white light poured in so arrogantly that it was too much for his eyes to handle. Squinting did not seem enough to defend against it and the light slipped between his fingers when he held up his hand in an attempt to shield his eyes.

~ J.c. Joranco

For his lunch break, Alex decided to sit outside for a smoke. There was no break room to speak of, just a backdoor that led to a neglected parking lot and an old payphone. There was an upturned crate by the door used to hold the door open or to sit on if one so desired. But Alex couldn't sit down, even though he had been standing for the past four hours, his anxious mind kept his feet moving.He paced back and forth, smoking his cigarette with the speed of an anxious drug addict. The cool but faint breeze pushed the smoke away from him and dissipated it into nothing. He still felt angry about the run-in with Gonzalez. It had consistently poked at him like a curious sadist with a pointed stick ever since he walked away from the door slammed in his face.

~ J.c. Joranco

Danilo's was the kind of place where many drinking men come to hide, be it from their wives, in-laws, their jobs or life in general. it was where men and women can come to drink poison as if it was the only form of medicine available to remedy the migraine headache called life. The lighting dim and secluded, mostly covering the tables, counters and the door to the bathroom. The walls were decorated in decades of memories, favorite sports teams and other miscellaneous decor that was typical of small bars such as this one. It was too dark to tell what they were from a distance. There was a thick layer of smoke hovering in the air around the ceiling lights, the place was smothered in it but was strongest above everyone's heads. The smell was the classic stale bar odor of cigarettes and cheap cigars.

~ J.c. Joranco

It was like walking into another world. While the mansion was bright, warm, comfy and filled with sound and color, the outside was dark, cold, colorless and devoid of people.I found myself standing beside Thomas in the street. The paved road felt so cold it was hurting my feet. I kept moving them up and down, afraid my skin would freeze to the pavement. My heart was racing already and I felt a bit out of breath. If we stood there much longer i was going to hyperventilate.

~ J.c. Joranco

Can you imagine how many people got laid in here? Abby said, walking to the other side of the Jacuzzi.

~ J.c. Joranco

That's what scares me the most, Paul. That I'll just pass through life and all the people I know will just disappear, without a trace, without me ever telling them how much they mean to me, no matter how small the time spent was or how great the friendship was. That they'll be gone and they'll forget me and I'll end up with nothing.I saw in my head Charley laughing, Charley sticking his head out the window and screaming, Charley playing a video game so intensely he was a foot from the screen. Moments flashed before my eyes in a quick, unrelenting sequence. I shook my head. I know. Believe me, I know.

~ J.c. Joranco

Thomas tilted his head towards me. Don't mind him, he's drunk.Does he work for you? I asked him. Who, Rick? No no no. Really though, he's a fine gentleman, if you speak to him while you're heavily intoxicated. You have to be brought down to HIS level of intelligence in order to properly communicate with him, you see. Thomas said.

~ J.c. Joranco

Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses. Is there any other period in your life when you hate your best friend on Monday and love them again on Tuesday? But at eight, 10, 12, you don't realise you're going to die. There is always the possibility of escape. There is always somewhere else and far away, a fact I had never really appreciated until I read Gitta Sereny's profoundly unsettling Cries Unheard about child-killer Mary Bell.At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realise that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We begin to picture a time when there will no longer be somewhere else and far away. We have jobs, children, partners, debts, responsibilities. And if many of these things enrich our lives immeasurably, those shrinking limits are something we all have to come to terms with.This, I think, is the part of us to which literary fiction speaks.

~ Mark Haddon

The Professor is coming...

~ M.k. Hopkins

Join us. Play the game. It will bring you an untold number of rewards and you will finally have some direction and purpose in your lives. Take control of yourselves and those around you. Bend them to your will and all worldly pleasures will be yours...

~ Martin Hopkins

Nothing is ‘wrong’ with me, Dan. What’s wrong with you? she said in the same eerily quiet voice, dark eyes fixated on Dan, as she breathed heavily.

~ Martin Hopkins

The slick concrete reflected the facades of the work weary - grey, cracked and old,but more importantly, trodden upon.

~ Martin Hopkins

I had a dream. In the dream someone was critical of my newest novel The Snail's Castle. I said, don't worry about it. If you don't like it, just throw it out the window. I awoke, grinning, with a wonderful feeling of freedom.

~ Mark Gordon

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.

~ Chinua Achebe

Bah! You want to hear the vilest thing a man’s done and you want him to be a hero at the same time!

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Decades after little Colleen’s death, my sister Kathy still loves her daughter dearly. Colleen was born with cerebral palsy. She died in Kath’s arms in a rocking chair at the age of six. They were listening to a music box that looked very much like a smiling pink bunny.The opening quote in this book, “I will love you forever, but I’ll only miss you for the rest of my life,” is from Kath’s nightly prayers to her child.Colleen couldn’t really talk or walk very well, but loved untying my mother’s tennis shoes and then laughing. When Mom died decades later we sent her off in tennis shoes so Colleen would have something to untie in Heaven.In the meantime, Dad had probably been taking really good care of her up there. He must have been aching to hug her for all of her six years on earth.Mom’s spirit comes back to play with great grandchildren she’d never met or had a chance to love while she was still – I almost said “among the living.” In my family, though, the dead don’t always stay that way. You can be among the living without technically being alive. Mom comes back to play, but Dad shows up only in emergencies. They are both watching over their loved ones.“The Mourning After” is dedicated to all those we have had the joy of loving before they’ve slipped away to the other side.It then celebrates the joy of re-unions.

~ Edward Fahey

There comes a hush between darkness and day.Like expectation of a caress.A murmur of silence. Tree crests peeked down at Paulette through slowly lifting fog. Bark felt around for its texture again. Morning gathered and drifted through mere hints; through vague hopeful nuances of ‘Just maybe’.- From The Gardens of Ailana handbook for healers & mystics

~ Edward Fahey

...the pleasures of literary fiction are the pleasures of orientation, the pleasures of literature are the pleasures of bewilderment.

~ Toby Litt

The Booker thing was a catalyst for me in a bizarre way. It’s perceived as an accolade to be published as a ‘literary’ writer, but, actually, it’s pompous and it’s fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself. I’d always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s, as substitutes for experience.

~ Neil Cross

When they ask me why I jumped off the roof of my brother’s apartment building, I will tell them it was because I wanted the sky to mourn me.And because I wanted to know what it feels like to hit something so hard it shatters me into bits that they can never sew back together.

~ Kady Hunt

One likes to think that there is some fantastic limbo for the children of imagination, some strange, impossible place where the beaux of Fielding may still make love to the belles of Richardson, where Scott’s heroes still may strut, Dickens’s delightful Cockneys still raise a laugh, and Thackeray’s worldlings continue to carry on their reprehensible careers. Perhaps in some humble corner of such a Valhalla, Sherlock and his Watson may for a time find a place, while some more astute sleuth with some even less astute comrade may fill the stage which they have vacated.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The things white men failed to notice would fill the world they had ruined ten thousand times over.

~ David Burr Gerrard

Once upon a time Karen saw somebody nobody else could see. She thought to ask an old man: who were you? Once upon a time I thought to dream of medicine. Now I dream of medicine by the sea.

~ Nicholaus Patnaude

She remembers this phrase from his final months of law school, when he brought home the books on starting up a business. He'd read ravenously for several weeks and then predicted: Well, darling, we're going to be rich. Now he slaps shut the last of his books and announces, with equal assurance: We're all going to die.

~ Jacob Appel

In the temple, I sit on the cool floor next to Grandfather, beneath the stern benevolence of the goddess's glance. Grandfather is clad in only a traditional silk dhoti--no fancy modern clothes for him. That's one of the things I admire about him, how he is always unapologetically, uncompromisingly himself. His spine is erect and impatient; white hairs blaze across his chest.

~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

In the white marble hall of the hotel, I'm waltzing with Rajat. The music is a river and we're dancing in it. It winds against our bodies, muscular as a serpent.

~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

I don't correct her to let her know her backdoor wisdom yanks me deep into another country, where water runs uphill.

~ Justin Bog

Just read The Virtue of Minding Your Own Business. Oh my, what currents run deep! Beautifully seen, beautifully told. Praise praise praise . . . Pardon my French, but you are one darn major American writer!---Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions, on Sandcastle and Other Stories

~ Richard Bach

Beautiful day out there,” I said, perching on the stool and crossing my legs. “It’s autumn, Sunday, great weather, and crowded everywhere you go. Relaxing indoors like this is the best thing you can do on such a nice day. It’s exhausting to get into those crowds. And the air is bad. I mostly do laundry on Sundays—wash the stuff in the morning, hang it out on the roof of my dorm, take it in before the sun goes down, do a good job of ironing it. I don’t mind ironing at all. There’s a special satisfaction in making wrinkled things smooth. And I’m pretty good at it, too. Of course, I was lousy at it at first. I put creases in everything. After a month of practice, though, I knew what I was doing. So Sunday is my day for laundry and ironing. I couldn’t do it today, of course. Too bad: wasted a perfect laundry day.

~ Haruki Murakami

Evil should not be, Detective Vera. Truly never can be. But in defining it as such, an inherent human bond with negativity confirms its very existence. Its mere acknowledgement cancels its credibility. Evil is nothing—the lack of anything of substance— made concrete as a balance to everything else. Evil is not, yet it is a part ofeach human, because humans welcome its participation in their lives. They speak of it in anger or disgust, fear or even wonder— the most appropriate response— giving it a stronger foundation with every passing thought it distorts. Though within their pliable minds, they welcome it with the glee of the ignorant, nurturing the unthinkable, thinking the unimaginable, imagining the most horrid, abysmal designs, embellishing them with an insidious veracity until evil is as substantial a reality as their next breath. I strive for something else, beyond evil’s claustrophobic clutches. I strive to transcend evil by becoming pure nothing. I strive as my followers strived.” He paused, his ideology a cancer, spreading… “I am, yet I strive to not be. Do you understand, comrade?” His tone suggested fellowship, disciples of the same obscene religion. ...

~ John Claude Smith

Maybe that’s why I was so afraid of Sasha’s love. With him comes the remembering part that I was so good at forgetting.~Piper - 'Breathe Me

~ Alexia Purdy

The Kahn spoke to his disfigured expert. Mal-Greb, confused at first, listened, nodded and bowed his head like the slave he was. Jani Beg momentarily seized with energy grabbed the smaller man by the shoulders and breathed into his face “Hurl them back to Hell!”The wild look in the Kahn’s eyes was something that Mal-Greb understood.And so they began.

~ Karl P.t. Walsh

Underground, in the dark wet hole that was home to the spiders and the rats, something moved. It had no right to be down there but it belonged nowhere else. Half drowned half alive it pushed the water ahead of it into the culverts and drains as it passed. Right under the city and out into the suburbs and fields these tunnels fed into the river and the network of canals that had fed the industrial revolution. A thousand eyes, some blinded, that had never seen the sun strained in the soiled darkness. It struggled on and it listened with a thousand ears not its own and it cried.

~ Karl P.t. Walsh

Thinking, like other drugs, can be a useful distraction from pain, as long as it's managed and doesn't become an addiction.

~ David Burr Gerrard

Not having any drink about ain’t the same as not understanding the need for one. Times like these change a body’s perspective.

~ Samuel Snoek-Brown

Dare I ask Mao and his Communist Party?I fear my throat will be cut into two pieces.In the name of revolution, for thought crimes,Such questions can turn me to ashes.

~ Zoë S. Roy

Underneath the groundyou can't hear a soundnot even the sweet falling rainyou might forget about tomorrowforget about the swallowsbut they won't forget youthey won't forget you

~ Karl P.t. Walsh