Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors–we hope–of your life come from reading fiction.

How have people come to be taken in by The Phenomenon of Man? We must not underestimate the size of the market for works of this kind [pseudoscience/’woo’], for philosophy-fiction. Just as compulsory primary education...

Most stories are not about peoplebut about life, an addiction like the rest of themthat destroys you even as you love it,but you love it anyway and can never get enough.

The problem with a lot of people who read only literary fiction is that they assume fantasy is just books about orcs and goblins and dragons and wizards and bullshit. And to be fair, a...

Grayson: Fiction is just a lie anyway.Brianna: But it’s not – it’s a different kind of truth – it would be your truth at the time of the writing, wouldn’t it?

You deserved it.

It is not my job to explain the story or understand the story or reduce it to a phrase or offer it as being a story about any specific person, place, or thing. My job...

Sweet as sugar. Let’s get back to why you won’t let me put my hands on you.

Everyday, God gives us the sun- and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Everyday, we try to pretend that we haven’t perceived that moment, that...

From Flood, Flash, and Pheromones–coming soon:As Cassie’s body hurled toward him in the swirl, she realized the brevity of the situation. This was it. This was the moment that determined whether she lived to see...

But then, that’s the beauty of writing stories—each one is an exploratory journey in search of a reason and a shape. And when you find that reason and that shape, there’s no feeling like it.”[Peter...

As he drove away from his handiwork, knowing he’d left no survivors, the killer looked at the rising smoke and gave himself a pat on the back for another assignment well done…

Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can’t talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.

I think fiction allows us to sit for a while with people we would rather not meet.

When will people learn that just because you can make something doesn’t mean you should?

When you think about the period in which Agatha Christie’s crime novels were written, they are actually quite edgy for the time.

Bahagia itu persepsi. Bahagia tidak menunggu punya kekayaan, punya anak yang sehat dan pintar, punya pasangan yang sempurna, dan keluarga yang sempurna. Kebanyakan orang berpikir bahwa untuk bahagia, mereka harus mendapatkan lebih dulu apa yang...

…Obviously, I have always wished I could remember what happened in that wood. The very few people who know about the whole Knocknaree thing invariably suggest, sooner or later, that I should try hypnotic regression,...

What comes from the heart will go to the heart

How long has it been since I entered this blackness? Has it been days, months, or years? I’m stuck here with my mind, my thoughts, my memories, and my nightmares.

I think the idea that we have anything to begin with is a lie we tell ourselves every day until we believe it. I think the law is there to enforce fictions that would not...

It has been raining here for ten years.I keep an accurate record of time and can state this with no fear of contradiction.

Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we as readers have a strong subconscious wish to find them incredible.

Listen.” Jennifer reverted, “I didn’t mean anything by all of that before. I understand what you were trying to do and …” She struggled for the right words. “Sweetie, like love, people don’t live inside...

In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right...

Laurel look up at him in question, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. She always wished she had more time to draw secrets from him. “I’ll wear it always,” she said.”And think of me?” His...

Are you imperfect, romantically irrational, ridiculously fearless, and utterly illogical? You’re my ideal reader, friend, partner. I’m your fan.

She cries cuz shes lost and she doesn’t even know what she wants. Her eyes grow cold as she begs the world to just let her go.lines from Love Vs Destiny…

Dawn cackles as she guides me through the all-glass porch. Thinner, paler Reina shuffles about behind Dawn, watching as I slip my boots off. Although she tries to hide her hands, her fingers flicker nervously....

I want to be the best race horse around when I grow up, Mama.You can be, Charlie, as long as you are willing to try your best and not give up when you have a...

How do I know what I think until I see what I say?

Whenever I’d get howlin’ over something, he’d grab my ass up from wherever I was and head straight for the john. Momma said my head would get banged up along the way, but she said...

Knowing too much had turned him into something else, and he wasn’t sure he liked this newer him, although he felt he could not stop being this other him, darker.

Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a sharp and prophetic awareness of...

I refuse to live in a constant fighting match, Landon. It will not do!’ ‘And I’ve tried living without you, and it just won’t do!

Her eyes were a rich dark brown that were so deep, they reminded me of my sleepless nights, awake, staring into complete darkness. I felt compelled to look deeper, searching for something inside her, but...

Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

Respect the dead, learn from them, do not follow or avenge them.

For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.

Fiction may amuse us, but reality instills lessons to be imbibed through experience; to ‘live’ this stark reality called ‘life’ as a blessing, whereas some foolishly waste it by following fiction and fictitious characters.

By the time I was sixteen I had read many books and I had become a freethinker.

Hell, he now understood, went beyond simple torture. Hell inflicted agony with intermittent reprieves to maintain the hope of peace. Hell was not endless dark, but rare rays of sunlight to keep one’s eyes longing...

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.

The last image I registered was Ethan and my hand – linked, bound and unbreakable.

It is ourselves we encounter whenever we invent fictions.

It was a strange feeling, like touching a void.

Kate stops grinding the knife and begins to pass it over the length of the stone. Turning her wrist, she pulls the blade, swiping one side after the other, honing it to a fine edge....

…there are books…which you can’t tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.

I want art that makes the world seem more unreal. I want fiction that can crumble the world and build it back into something new.

Outside of the usual bar or nightclub, it’s not every day that I get a drink bought for me-at least not by strangers and certainly not on a workday. On that Saturday, in September 2010,...