Famous Quotes & Sayings

Anton Chekhov

The aim of fiction is absolute and honest truth.

Abraham Verghese

Medicine, you see, is my first love; whether I write fiction or nonfiction, and even when it has nothing to do with medicine, it's still about medicine. After all, what is medicine but life plus? So I write about life.

Doris Lessing

What they [critics of Lessing's switch to science fiction] didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time.

Michael Connelly

What I do now is I write fiction. I ground my fiction in the reality of a place called Los Angeles.

Alfred Hitchcock

In the documentary the basic material has been created by God, whereas in the fiction film the director is a God; he must create life.

Raymond Carver

Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.

Ray Bradbury

There's a lot of crap out there. Most of the science fiction films alone are abominations, you know. They're mindless. So you can't learn from those kinds of films.

Siri Hustvedt

I've often thought that one of us is what we imagine, that each of us normalizes the terrible strangeness of inner life with a variety of convenient fictions.

Neil Gaiman

Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and life doesn't.

Christine Baranski

I never say I have a preference for one medium as opposed to another.

Michel Faber

All my novels are about people who strive to heal and evolve.

Amos Oz

Almost without exception, my novels are rooted in Israel because that's the place I know well.

Tom Perrotta

The lesson you have to learn as novelist is how to be collaborative, and how to say, "I don't get to dictate this."

Jessica Savitch

Being a novelty had its advantages.

Jojo Moyes

Rejection is part of the process, so you can't let it crush you. My first three novels never made it into publication, but my fourth, 'Sheltering Rain,' was translated into 11 languages.

George Bernard Shaw

It is the sexless novel that should be distinguished: the sex novel is now normal.

Elizabeth Hardwick

Now, my novel begins. No, now I begin my novel—and yet I cannot decide whether to call myself I or she.

Terry Pratchett

It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing.

Joyce Carol Oates

Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite.