You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
Fiction is no longer a mere amusement; but transcendent genius, accommodating itself to the character of the age, has seized upon this province of literature, and turned fiction from a toy into a mighty engine.
—William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) American Unitarian Theologian, Poet
The best histories may sometimes be those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed.—Something is lost in accuracy, but much is gained in effect.—The fainter lines are neglected, but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind forever.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–59) English Historian, Essayist, Philanthropist
Those who delight in the study of human nature, may improve in the knowledge of it, and in the profitable application of it by the perusal of the best selected fictions.
—Richard Whately (1787–1863) English Philosopher, Theologian
Novels so often provide an anodyne and not an antidote, glide one into torpid slumbers instead of rousing one with a burning brand.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language but it insists upon the freedom to portray and analyze the struggle between the different contestants for such privileges.
—Salman Rushdie (b.1947) Indian-born British Novelist
All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.
—Milan Kundera (b.1929) Czech Novelist
Romances I never read like those I have seen.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
It’s with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
Our interest’s on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, the superstitious atheist.
—Robert Browning (1812–89) English Poet
Educating a son I should allow him no fairy tales and only a very few novels. This is to prevent him from having 1. the sense of romantic solitude (if he is worth anything he will develop a proper and useful solitude) which identification with the hero gives. 2. cant ideas of right and wrong, absurd systems of honor and morality which never will he be able completely to get rid of, 3. the attainment of “ideals,” of a priori desires, of a priori emotions. He should amuse himself with fact only: he will then not learn that if the weak younger son do or do not the magical honorable thing he will win the princess with hair like flax.
—Lionel Trilling (1905–75) American Literary Critic
But I hate things all fiction… there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric—and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
By its very nature, the novel indicates that we are becoming. There is no final solution. There is no last word.
—Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012) Mexican Novelist, Diplomat
Every fiction that has ever laid strong hold on human belief is the mistaken image of some great truth.
—James Martineau (1805–1900) English Philosopher, Religious Leader
Would you not like to try all sorts of lives—one is so very small—but that is the satisfaction of writing—one can impersonate so many people.
—Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand-born British Author
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
—Stephen King (b.1947) American Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Screenwriter, Columnist, Film Director
When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to write about marriage, because that’s the most important thing there is for middle-class people.
—Gore Vidal (1925–48) American Novelist, Essayist, Journalist, Playwright
The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.
—E. M. Forster (1879–1970) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist
We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind—mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer’s task is to invent the reality.
—J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) English Novelist, Short Story Writer
Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality. This is quite opposite to our own natural tendency which is to anticipate reality by imagining it, or to flee from it by idealizing it. That is why we shall never inhabit true fiction; we are condemned to the imaginary and nostalgia for the future.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
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 (b.1947) Indian-born British Novelist
There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius. They give us, in the guise of fiction, something equivalent to the actual density of the real, that density which life offers us every day but which we are unable to grasp because we are amusing ourselves with lies.
—Simone Weil (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist
It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American Novelist
I have often maintained that fiction may be much more instructive than real history.
—John Foster Dulles (1888–1959) American Republican Public Official, Lawyer
Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
The really great novel tends to be the exact negative of its author’s life.
—Andre Maurois (1885–1967) French Novelist, Biographer