If his relative success hadn’t made him happy, it had, on average, made him less unhappy.

I think once they get into it and read it, they’ll plug right in to it, … It’s not fiction. It’s the real thing. The message and underlying theme are serious. There are parts of...

I’m a minicamp body in 102-degree heat getting screamed at by the only other man my size: a middle-aged receivers coach they call Bow Wow.

While the stories are fiction, the journey is real.

It’s really comprehensive. I wasn’t familiar with early science fiction. It’s cool to see the roots of sci-fi.

It didn’t take me long out there, in the landscapes my father had painted, to realize that as much as I loved my country [Australia], I barely knew it. I’d spent so many years studying...

Evan ran his finger across the faded leather spines. He laughed at how silly some of the names were: Paint Your Roses Red, Edelweiss and Me, World of Mushrooms and Fungi, The Toadstool Diaries, Daffodils...

Hazel Motes sat at a forward angel on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle...

Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.

The pupil of a goat’s eye is elongate like a cat’s, but if you look closely you’ll see that it’s in the horizontal position, and if you look closer still you’ll see that it’s less...

Tell you what, you let me go, and I’ll ask you plenty of questions about your race. Until then, I’m slightly distracted with how this little vacation on the good ship Holy Sh*t is going...

Writing fiction takes me out of time. I sit down and the clock will not exist for me for a few hours. That’s probably as close to immortal as we’ll ever get.

Milcas raced out his door, anxious to find the answer to this riddle and discover the source of hope for a Roegan in Fargranther; the propellant of an unheard of, forgotten, impossible, and by all...

‘The New Yorker’s fiction podcast I like a lot, where they have authors pick short stories by other authors that appeared in ‘The New Yorker.’

…don’t discount intuition. It holds more wisdom than technology can ever afford

It was the love which the hunter has for living things, and which he can only express by aiming his gun at them …

I do not need a scabbard to sheathe my mind.

…Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk.

I’m not an unproductive liar—I’m a productive fiction writer. I make stuff. I make stuff up.

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...

In the mind of all, fiction, in the logical sense, has been the coin of necessity;—in that of poets of amusement—in that of the priest and the lawyer of mischievous immorality in the shape of...

Sometimes people who look different from you are scary. Maybe they are ugly. Maybe they are loud. Maybe theyare big. Maybe they are green. Maybe they are all those things. But you should not be...

My mother picked me up in her arms, touching my checks comforting my distress. I stared into her eyes and held her hair in my small hands, for the first time realizing what a moment...

And there it is! Bravo! I knew it was only a matter of time before Byron realized he had an audience. That man is simply incapable of keeping his shirt on when there are spectators....

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...

Chosen

I have a question for you. When you were a little boy, is this the man you dreamed of becoming?

I’m pregnant.” I instinctively picture a sixteen-year-old at the dinner table- pale, unwell, with a scoundrel of a boyfriend- forcing herself to blurt out her mother’s deepest fear.) (27)

Fiction, however, sometimes ensures disappointment with reality

if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn’t there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That’s why imaginary things are often...

You never give such relationships a thought, To give a thought, to take a thought is a function of dissociation, distance. You can’t exercise memory until you’ve removed yourself from memory’s source.

Did you see him eat?

I’ve been told I’m an excellent kisser.

T.G.T.B.T: too good to be true.

Edward smiled, I smiled, even Bernardo smiled. Olaf just looked sinister.

Why won’t you just go and find out?” the question startled her. She whirled around to come face to face with her evil aunt; Ursula.

Irma, she said. But I had started to walk away. I heard her say some more things but by then I had yanked my skirt up and was running down the road away from her...

Eagles, buffalos and deserts vast, it’s no good living in the fucking past.

Surrealism also refuses the representation of reality: reality can only be; its existence proves its reality. Fiction thereby becomes impossible or is, by definition, false.

Remember, nothing happens before it’s supposed to, so trust that, as you are striving for authenticity and personal excellence, the recognition of your life’s purpose is nearing closer.

For the girl without words, there is laughter for what is light, gesture for want, and tears for all that is dark. There is not much more. Names are nothing but extravagance.

But that which is called a Flower by any other name would still be as trusting and they were not to change her. In fact, she grew only more Hothouse-gorgeous as the bitterness poured down...

She believes poetry is ‘a way of coming to know the realness of things; fiction is a way of coming to know the world of relationships; nonfiction is a way of coming to know the...

Yeah, tell me I’m a bottle of single malt scotch, she thought. That’s the way to my heart.

A related question is where in time to begin. Should you begin far back in a character’s past and move forward, or should you begin in the present and make use of flashbacks only where...

There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies – which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world – what I want to forget.

Amelia nodded her head, “That makes perfect sense.””No is doesn’t,” jeered Otto.”Yes, it does,” sighed Amelia. “Don’t you ever remember anything important?””Of course, I remember how many Star Trek seasons there were and when the...

The truth is, time marches on and you have two choices: You move forward, come what may, and you experience all the sour and sweet things that fly at you from around corners, or you...

Cery: So, Hem, tell me why I shouldn’t see how many holes I need to make before you start leaking money?

An eye for an eye my friend.