Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.
John Updike – Criticism, Fiction
There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.
Charles Dickens – Fiction
Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.
Virginia Woolf – Fiction, Literature
The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins.
salman Rushdie – Fiction
Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.
Gabriel García Marquez – Fiction
Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.
Albert Camus – Fiction
Each book, intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on what has gone before, and grows out of it.
