The ocean swells around us. Sometimes, we are in a bowl of water and sometimes on the top of the lip. The horizon curves.We are sitting on top of the world.In theory, anyone is on...

Recognize that you have been chosen to be alive, right now, at this exact moment in time and know that none of that is random. There is something about you, your past or your future...

Can’t say I’ve ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things. Give me a good ending anytime. You know where you are with an ending.

Fear is a prison in which we place ourselves. You need only to press against the bars to realize that the door is always unlocked, and you are always free to leave.

Ivy!’ I stammered, then glared at Kisten. ‘You told Ivy? Thanks a hell of a lot. Want to call my mom next?

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.

Good writing should help us see the world in new ways, it should crack open our generosity towards each other. That’s what I hope my work does anyway. I want someone to read it and...

I sat down in a booth, and the waitress shoved a menu in front of me. There wasn’t anything on it that sounded good, and anyway, one look at her and my stomach turned flipflops…...

I’ve always been interested in science fiction.

Fictional people are people, too, otherwise why would we care what happens to them?

Stand still while I yell at you.

One of my professors once told me that the last official act of the British monarchy was when Queen Victoria refused to sign a law that made same-sex acts illegal. It would have made me...

You took apart your robot dog.

I’m not ready to die.

I don’t think Pulp Fiction is hard to watch at all.

The Friday before winter break, my mom packed me an overnight bag and a few deadly weapons and took me to a new boarding school.

The Queen’s Pride was his ship, and he loved her. (That was the way his sentences always went: It is raining today and I love you. My cold is better and I love you. Say...

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

A woman’s got one life: She’s got to reach out and grab it with both hands, or it’ll pass her by and leave nothing but a smelly old fart in her face.

And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so...

Katherine of Aragon was speaking out for the women of the country, for the good wives who should not be put aside just because their husbands had taken a fancy to another, for the women...

Don’t trust anybody else—no matter how close you are to them.” (Eric)

Time will solve all the problems Chinese school graduates face. In our bilingual society, there are no more Chinese school graduates, only English school graduates who can speak Mandarin. These English school graduates probably can...

For me, a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where...

Most civilizations had more fiction than they did real history.

It’s said that there’s three sides to a story: yours, mine, and the truth. Check out God in Wingtip Shoes and The Prison Plumb Line to explore all three.

Romance is the fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of things as they are. In the novel the writer’s thought is tethered to probability, but in romance it ranges at will over the...

They weren’t true stories; they were better than that.

A dark shadow rose from the depth of the watercourse. Forced to crawl out of the oceans rolling waves, it struggled against the pull of the undertow. Rising, it moved further up the white sandy...

The reading eye must do the work to make them live, and so it did, again and again, never the same life twice, as the artist had intended.

Ich glaube, daß die Umstände des Lebens, so zufällig wie sie sind, uns weniger dauerhafte Wahrheiten lehren als die Fiktionen, die sich auf diese Wahrheiten gründen.

At the small table, sitting very upright, was one of the ugliest old ladies he had ever seen. It was an ugliness of distinction – it fascinated rather than repelled.

I never was very good at acting. I never was very good at playing the role. Because the true pretending can only come off in our genuine awareness of the real. Only those of us...

A wise man does not step betwixt the beast and his meat

There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.

Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.

He wishes he could remember everything. Anything. He doesn’t sense a bone in his body that can feel compassion or worthiness. Self-pity hides away as well, the lowest form of emotion not even capable of...

Adults…struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire...

History is written by the survivors.

When someone cries so hard that it hurts their throat, it is out of frustration or knowing that no matter what you can do or attempt to do can change the situation. When you feel...

The only way that America can protect its prosperity and political stability will be to depopulate the Third World? Should we be surprised that the AIDS virus showed up about 1975? Do you understand what...

Hate did not give way to heroism.

Great fiction is the art of a soul.

What came to me later in those dark, dreaming hours put paid to that though and as always my mind led me treacherously back to the bleak and inescapable truth. There was no cure for...

Like I’ve told you before, Beverly, I don’t care where we live as long as we’re together.” Vance… “The Elder Effect

Everyone has a story. I don’t believer anyone can go through life without encountering at least one amazing thing.

I don’t know about you, but I find the idea of a school at night time – imagining the silent classrooms in total darkness and the playgrounds left lonesome and bare – creepily peculiar.

She smiled sinisterly. Light mist started to slowly swirl around us. All I could see was her, the tall rocks and the white wall. She beckoned to me. I took a step and another. I...

Any self-defense class worth its salt will tell you thatyou don’t pull out a weapon unless you intend to use it.The same should apply to ballsy remarks.

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