Fiction Quotes
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Ven you read the speeches in the papers, and see as vun gen'lman says of another, 'the Honourable member, if he vill allow me to call him so' you vill understand, sir, that that means, 'if he vill allow me to keep up that 'ere pleasant and uniwersal fiction.'
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There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last respect a rather common one.
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I started writing short fiction very briefly, as I imagine is the case for some novelists.
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A snappy label and a manifesto would have been two of the very last things on my own career want list. That label enabled mainstream science fiction to safely assimilate our dissident influence, such as it was. Cyberpunk could then be embraced and given prizes and patted on the head, and genre science fiction could continue unchanged.
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When I was a young writer if you went to a party and told somebody you were a science-fiction writer you would be insulted. They would call you Flash Gordon all evening, or Buck Rogers.
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I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it's such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction.
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Science fiction is a mode of romance with a strong inherent tendency to myth.
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It is a sad paradox that when male authors impersonate women ... they are said to be dealing with 'cosmic, major concerns' - but when we impersonate ourselves we are said to be writing 'women's fiction' or 'women's poetry.
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In the past, it was only in science fiction novels that you could read about ordinary people being able to go to space... But you laid the foundation for space tourism.
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Good fiction creates its own reality.
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I was really into writing short fiction and also photography when I was a kid.
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The fiction is not autobiographical. Maybe to some extent it is, of course.
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There are certain kinds of people who write science fiction. I think a lot of us married late. A lot of us are mama's boys. I lived at home until I was 27. But most of the writers I know in any field, especially science fiction, grew up late. They're so interested in doing what they do and in their science, they don't think about other things.
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If you would understand your own age, read the works of fiction produced in it. People in disguise speak freely.
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The training of a journalist, of working with words for thousands of hours, is extraordinarily useful for a fiction writer.
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Real life was messier than fiction, and in it you didn't always have time to do or say the right things.
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Academic writing you have to get right. Fiction you have to get plausible. And there's a world of difference. In a way, if someone says this didn't feel exactly right, I don't care. But that is not okay to do in academia - it's not about feeling. You want to establish a pretty solid case. So did this allow me to express things differently? Absolutely. Another thing I've been thinking about as an academic: our writing style is expository, and in fiction, withholding information matters quite a bit. Withholding things in academia - there's no place for that!
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You can't be wrong in journalism. Take a wrong turn in journalism, and you are writing fiction. You can take a wrong turn in poetry, and something wonderful can happen.
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The Forgotten Realms is arguable the most detailed, intricate fantasy setting ever created this side of Middle Earth. It's a setting for many D&D game products and lots of fiction. It is vast, historically and geographically and so contains just about anything you might imagine, at one place or time or another. Created by Ed Greenwood. And, for the record, Ed Greenwood is one of the smartest guys I've ever met.
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Anyway, several rewrites later, Del Rey Books did publish my first novel, and it did become the first work of fiction on the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list.
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I had a list of things that science fiction, particularly American science fiction, to me seemed to do with tedious regularity. One was to not have strong female protagonists. One was to envision the future, whatever it was, as America.
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There's no need for fiction in medicine,' remarks Foster... 'for the facts will always beat anything you fancy.
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Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention.
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I like to read biographies of authors that I love, like Richard Yates. I also like to see what non-fiction authors are out there. My bible is Something Happened. It's one of the greatest books I've ever read. But if I don't read a Dostoevsky soon I'm going to kill myself.
