#on-fiction

"There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself."

"Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth."

"Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love."

"Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream."

"Tis strange,-but true; for truth is always strange;Stranger than fiction: if it could be told,How much would novels gain by the exchange!How differently the world would men behold!"

"In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies."

"If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats."

"Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life."

"A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth."

"I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?"

"A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions. Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our dreams, our blunders, our contradictions, our endless quest for understanding. Good stories do not resolve the mysteries of the human spirit but rather describe and expand up on those mysteries."

"Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.."

"The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue ..."

"Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency,"or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery."

"A good book isn't written, it's rewritten."

"if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones."

"There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong."

"There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth."

"One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper."

"Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity."