Fiction Quotes

All my fiction starts from a feeling of unique perception, the pressure of a secret, a story that needs to be told.

Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.

And, of course, some SF is set close enough to here and now that Anglo and European do apply. Since many of the writers come from those backgrounds, so does much of the fiction.

Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.

I like going back and writing fiction.

Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.

As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies, as a form of abstract thought. I don't wish to deny the uses of the intellect, but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere.

But I think, and hope, that the novels can be understood and enjoyed as science fiction, on their own terms.

In journalism just one fact that is false prejudices the entire work. In contrast, in fiction one single fact that is true gives legitimacy to the entire work. That's the only difference, and it lies in the commitment of the writer. A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe in it.

You can never properly predict the future as it really turns out. So you are doing something a little different when you write science fiction. You are trying to take a different perspective on now.

Science fiction, to me, has not only things that wouldn't happen, but other planets.

It cannot be said often enough that science fiction as a genre is incredibly educational - and I'm speaking the written science fiction, not 'Star Trek.' Science fiction writers tend to fill their books if they're clever with little bits of interesting stuff and real stuff.

I started writing short stories. I tried writing horror, mystery, science fiction. I joined a little critique group here in town and ran my stories past them. After about three years, I tackled my first novel, Subterranean. It took me 11 months to write.

I've always been interested in science fiction.

I have to do more close research and fact checking for the science fiction. This is not however to say that writing good fantasy does not involve doing good research.

In journalism I can only tell what happened. In fiction, I can show it.

Young readers have to be entertained. No child reads fiction because they think it's going to make them a better person.

In fiction, too, after the death of Cooper the main tendency for nearly a generation was away from the conquest of new borders to the closer cultivation, east of the Mississippi, of ground already marked.

One of the nice things about science fiction is that it lets us carry out thought experiments.

I felt Joyce was an influence on my fiction, but in a very general way, as a kind of inspiration and a model for the beauty of language.

I wanted nothing less than to be a fiction writer when I was a kid. If you had told me I would be an artist or novelist when I grew up, I would have laughed in your face.

Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.

There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.

Such, Polly, are your sex - part truth, part fiction; - Some thought, much whim and all a contradiction.

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

There's more fiction in my life than in books, so I don't bother with them.

The capacity you're thinking of is imagination; without it there can be no understanding, indeed no fiction.

I think if I had been writing fiction, where the work is entirely dependent on the writer's creativity and the potential directions the narrative might take are infinite, I might have frozen.

Well, I'm at some kind of crossroads in my life and I don't know which way to take. It's not about money, I mean, because I'm established enough now as a writer to get a reasonable advance if I wanted to do fiction.

I instantly chucked my academic ambitions and began writing fiction full-time.