Quotes of: Fictional Keyword

Our relationship with literary characters, at least to those that exercise a certain attraction over us, rests in fact on a denial. We know perfectly well, on a conscious level, that these characters “do not exist,” or in any case do not exist in...

Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of The Hound of the Baskervilles

There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction, and, despite John Ray's assertion, Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exi...

Lolita

But when the wizard is onstage as the main character, you have to adopt what I call the Jack Vance Rule. I call it this because Jack Vance is the first author successfully and adroitly to have applied this rule in his The Dying Earth. The Jack Vance ...

Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth

Just then, just when I thought I would be free from the repeated blows to my tender head of the Stupidity Hammer, the Stupidity Hammer rose up from the shining screen, drew back, whirled hugely, and with great force and might and main slammed me righ...

Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth

Capable psychonauts who think about thinking, about states of mind, about set and setting, can get things done not because they have more willpower or drive, but because they know productivity is a game played against a childish primal human predilec...

You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself

It was a pity that people did not risk enough to speak out in behalf of one another's happiness and their own.

Collected Fiction

This story was a story of our time. And a writer's attempts not to fathom his time amount but to sounding his mind in it.

Collected Fiction

No matter how hard you try to create a story that's completely fictional, parts of your own experience are bound to surface.

Chain Mail: Addicted to You

Real life doesn't grant us many of the more than useful possibilities people can come out with in fiction.

Em memória

I can't accept that a work of fiction should be either immoral or moral. It should merely show the world as it is and have no moral bias.

Earthly Powers

Horror is a feeling that cannot last long; human nature is incapable of supporting it.

The Golden Age of Science Fiction

The trouble with fiction," said John Rivers, "is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.

The Genius And The Goddess

We spent 10 years writing our first fiction story and truly hope people like it.

The Good, Bad and Gold: The Pursuit

As many authors have said, if the writer is not surprised by events, then chances are that the reader will not be either, and grow bored.

How To Write Science Fiction

The emotional tone or affect of the tale should be hot and engaged, not remote and dispassionate.

How To Write Science Fiction

That was asking a lot of my readers, I realized, but I was trying to write the novel I would most enjoy decoding.

How To Write Science Fiction

This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.

The Books of Magic

Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in 'Black Mask' magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world.

Charles Frazier

'Harry Potter' made it cool to read children's fiction, and 'Twilight' did the same for a slightly older age group. What I'm seeing is mothers and daughters who love to read the same books.

L.A. Weatherly

They should hold themselves absolutely upon the immovable foundation of truth and nature, whereby alone they can save themselves from misapprehensions and from the danger of being entirely carried away from reality into mere dreams and fictions.

Ethan A. Hitchcock

I'm not writing non-fiction. I don't feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination.

John Irving