I didn’t even have a name for her, shade or human, but I didn’t need one to know her. (Eric)

Over the years I have forged intimate familial ties with these characters, who are reflections of a portion of myself. Consequently, even a character who appeared only once in a short story waits now in...

All stories have a curious and even dangerous power. They are manifestations of truth — yours and mine. And truth is all at once the most wonderful yet terrifying thing in the world, which makes...

It would be easier to write a novel without reader input, but I feel the fiction is richer for it.

I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.

A man who admits that dwarfs and giants and talking beasts and witches are still dear to him in his 50-third year is now less likely to be praised for his perennial youth than scorned...

Mr. Codro’s destiny is Ptolemaic; in other words, based on fiction. Ptolemaic says it all; it means above all fixed and unchanging, that is to say different from real life which is by nature changing...

A vida real não nos concede muitas possibilidades mais do que úteis que as pessoas podem ter na ficção.

Writing fiction, there are no limits to what you write as long as it increases the value of the paper you are writing on.

I will go to my grave in a state of abject endless fascination that we all have the capacity to become emotionally involved with a personality that doesn’t exist.

To be honest with you, I don’t have the words to make you feel better, but I do have the arms to give you a hug, ears to listen to whatever you want to talk...

The best restaurants are always down the side streets.

For every blissful moment you must an anguish meet.

Life’s a lot different from what people pretend. That’s why pretending is fun. I used to think it was some special wickedness of my own that made such queer things happen. Now I’m beginning to...

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.

The ocean drummed as loud as pulsating blood, eroding the sand, rushing the beach as if it had a point to prove. And like many things, it receded, was gone, and was replaced anew.

Human life is fiction’s only theme.

(M)ysteries in fiction are seldom as insoluble as those in life, as most writers can’t resist the lure of omniscience.

Listen: Common sense doesn’t mean what it used to mean.”-Matthias Chalmers, STAIRWAY2 HEAVEN

To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then...

With the threat of them being potential spies or saboteurs, nobody will argue against our actions, and history itself will vindicate us.

The human condition is such that we can only stomach so much imagination. We need for things to be labeled either fiction or nonfiction. There is no section in between.

People say I talk slowly. I talk in a way sometimes called laconic. The phone rings, I answer, and people ask if they’ve woken me up. I lose my way in the middle of sentences,...

As a fiction writer, let me make it up, and let me make it up to you. I’ll pen our love story, if you’ll be my co-author.

Once upon a time there was a young lady who lived in a marsh, and her name was Poison.

La vie ressemble plus souvent à un roman qu’un roman ne ressemble à la vie.”(“Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.”)

I told you; I am Arianna, the Siren, your Guardian, and how is a Guardian supposed to do her job if she is clueless about the Guardianee?

A steel door clapped open as a guard stepped from the bulletproof viewing station across the hall. “Adams!” “That you?” “I told you, I don’t know-” The cop pointed straight at him. “Jeffrey Adams! Front...

Life is a bowl of cherries just make sure you spit out the pits

One of the West’s singular migrations–from the Azores to California’s Great Central Valley–is given faces and voices in Anthony Barcellos’s new novel, Land of Milk and Money. Along with its triumphs, the Francisco family embodies...

I guess you could say I’m allergic to sunlight. If I’m exposed to it, it could kill me.

The Female Orgasm. The Big O. That elusive, reclusive Loch Ness of the labia. Does it prove the existence of God, or just His twisted sense of humor?

That’s sounds right. Another $5,000 went to dress up the Little League park where he had played so many games. Seems like he paid off the MORTAGE on his parents’ home, which wasn’t that much.

Nowadays people talk about the things he did as though they made sense. As though even his most disastrous mistakes were only the result of bad luck or hubris.

I think the category between fiction and non-fiction is nothing. The poetry of non-fiction is as fabulous as any poetry you could ever write in fiction. Poets have greatly influenced me. The only difference between...

You’re safe now. Remember that. Believe that.

É preciso que a realidade em mim seja já pura invenção para que eu a reconstrua, para que eu a cante.

Maybe that was the best part. The beautiful peace that came with living her own story, knowing every turn of the page and tug of the heart was a new beginning.

The simple truth is that the truth does not exist; it all depends on a person’s point of view.

Death. It was something I had to think about once. Weird, right? Strange that death was ever an inevitable end, but it wasn’t anymore. Not really. I eluded it. Tricked it. It was an odd...

Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” I said cheerfully, getting in touch with my inner smartass.

Non mi resta che un giorno di vita, dopo averne sottratti quindicimila alla morte, me ne resta appena un altro ancora. Al massimo due

Not a word!”I stormed out of the bathroom and that was the end of thatconversation

Do You Believe?

In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies.

I don’t know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves “Our Lady of the Perpetual Astonishment

As a historian, I found myself all too often treating my historical subjects like fictional characters, malleable entities that could be made to do one thing or another, whose motivations could be speculated upon endlessly,...

Great. I’d been dumped in Hell’s waiting room.

Other than along certain emotional tangents there was little in the book that felt as if it had actually been lived. It was a fiction produced by someone who knew only fictions, The Tempest as...

I had forgotten what fiction was to me as a boy, forgotten what it was like in the library: fiction was an escape from the intolerable, a doorway into impossibly hospitable worlds where things had...