110 Fictional Quotes

In the realm of literature and storytelling, fictional quotes have the power to inspire, entertain, and evoke deep emotions. They are the pearls of wisdom from characters that, though imagined, resonate with truths of the human experience. Whether from timeless classics, modern bestsellers, or realms of fantasy, these quotes often encapsulate profound insights and captivating narratives. Join us as we explore a handpicked selection of the top 110 fictional quotes that have left an indelible mark on readers' hearts and minds. Prepare to be moved, intrigued, and inspired by the words of some of fiction's most memorable voices.

1. “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!” - George Gordon Byron

2. “The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed for ever on her bosom.” - Charles Dickens

3. “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.” - Flannery O'Connor

4. “I came, I saw, I concurred...” - Darren E. Laws

5. “Well,' the Goddess said, 'your heart didn't heal straight the last time it broke. So we'll break it again and reset it so it heals straight this time.” - Jane Yolen

6. “They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction.'Poor Grendel's had an accident,' I whisper. 'So may you all.” - John Champlin Gardner

7. “In fiction, beauty was run-of-the-mill.” - Eileen Favorite

8. “Smiling, I cut across the quadrangle toward the commons. I felt better about life than I had in a very long time. We could do this, Lissa and me. We could do this together.” - Richelle Mead

9. “The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.” - Robert Jordan

10. “I have often wondered, Sir, [. . .] to observe so few Instances of Charity among Mankind; for tho' the Goodness of a Man's Heart did not incline him to relieve the Distresses of his Fellow-Creatures, methinks the Desire of Honour should move him to it. What inspires a Man to build fine Houses, to purchase fine Furniture, Pictures, Clothes, and other things at a great Expence, but an Ambition to be respected more than other People? Now would not one great Act of Charity, one Instance of redeeming a poor Family from all the Miseries of Poverty, restoring an unfortunate Tradesman by a Sum of Money to the means of procuring a Livelihood by his Industry, discharging an undone Debtor from his Debts or a Goal, or any such Example of Goodness, create a Man more Honour and Respect than he could acquire by the finest House, Furniture, Pictures or Clothes that were ever beheld? For not only the Object himself who was thus relieved, but all who heard the Name of such a Person must, I imagine, reverence him infinitely more than the Possessor of all those other things: which when we so admire, we rather praise the Builder, the Workman, the Painter, the Laceman, the Taylor, and the rest, by whose Ingenuity they are produced, than the Person who by his Money makes them his own.” - Henry Fielding

11. “Mr. Codro's destiny is Ptolemaic; in other words, based on fiction. Ptolemaic says it all; it means above all fixed and unchanging, that is to say different from real life which is by nature changing and temporary. It means: not according to natural truth, but according to man's desire and the pretense inspired by his fear of dying and his desire for permanence.” - Alberto Savinio

12. “Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.” - Herman Wouk

13. “I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.” - Ralph Ellison

14. “HATE is the shortest of human emotions, it is stronger than love, more compelling than lust. Page 30. THE SCALPEL – GAME BENEATH (www.hsrissam.com” - H.S. Rissam

15. “for he had acquired, as time went on, the firm conviction that any thought, even the most audacious, that any fiction, even the most insane, can one day materialize and see its fulfillment in space and time.” - Stefan Grabinski

16. “No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.” - Edgar Rice Burroughs

17. “It is only through fiction and the dimension of the imaginary that we can learn something real about individual experience. Any other approach is bound to be general and abstract.” - Nicola Chiaromonte

18. “You never give such relationships a thought, To give a thought, to take a thought is a function of dissociation, distance. You can't exercise memory until you've removed yourself from memory's source.” - Joyce Carol Oats

19. “The Worst thing that Good could do to Evil was ignore it...” - Michael K. Bialys

20. “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.” - James Joyce

21. “Why do people always assume that volume will succeed when logic won’t? - Damon” - L.J. Smith

22. “Perhaps it is our obligation to be noble before it is our obligation to be happy.” - Kathleen McGowan

23. “V shook his head. “Remember what you saw in that clearing, cop? How’d you like that anywhere near a female you loved?”Butch put down the Bud without drinking from it. His eyes traveled over Rhage’s body.“We’re going to need a shitload of steel,” the human muttered.” - J.R. Ward

24. “And whose rules will choose to you follow? God's? Or man's? You say you want to break the outmoded patterns and crate a new model? Then do it. That is part of your destiny, boy.” - Kathleen McGowan

25. “The future is there," Cayce hears herself say, "looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. And from where they are, the past behind us will look nothing at all like the past we imagine behind us now.” - William Gibson

26. “When good Americans die, they go to Paris,' the ghost said, after taking a drag on a small cigarette.But you’re not dead. I suppose the question must be, are you good?” - Karen Chance

27. “Great. I'd been dumped in Hell's waiting room.” - Karen Chance

28. “I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows.” - E.M. Forster

29. “There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.” - Joseph Conrad

30. “Ivy!' I stammered, then glared at Kisten. 'You told Ivy? Thanks a hell of a lot. Want to call my mom next?” - Kim Harrison

31. “Join us next time for Days of the Undead when Rachel learns her long lost brother is really a crown prince from outer space.” - Kim Harrison

32. “So...Mason, Eddie, and Mia went to Spokane to hunt Strigoi?""Yes.""Holy shit. Why didn't you go with them? Seems like something you'd do."I resisted the urge to smack him. "Because I'm not insane! But I'm going to go get them before they do something even stupider.” - Richelle Mead

33. “You've a pretty good nerve," said Ratchett. "Will twenty thousand dollars tempt you?"It will not."If you're holding out for more, you won't get it. I know what a thing's worth to me."I, also M. Ratchett."What's wrong with my proposition?"Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal - I do not like your face, M. Ratchett," he said.” - Agatha Christie

34. “I'm really not up for answering any questions that start with how, when, where, why or what.” - John Green

35. “..and I thought how liking a boy was just the same as believing you wanted to know a secret - everything was better when you were denied and could feel tormented by curiousity or loneliness. But the moment of something happening was treacherous. It was just so tiring to have to worry about whether your face was peeling, or to have to laugh at stories that weren’t funny.” - Curtis Sittenfeld

36. “Anne has small superstitions which she uses to dispel anxieties. For instance, if she can make it to the fourth stain on the carpet by the time the elevator door closes, that means Nate has thought positively about her today, and there is a future where they know each other. It becomes a one-sided competition when a negative consequence is imagined: if she cannot touch two different kinds of tile with her feet by the time the toilet flushes, that means she said something crucially “wrong” in an email, and Nate will never contact her again. She doesn't keep track of which side is winning.” - Megan Boyle

37. “T.G.T.B.T: too good to be true.” - Madonna

38. “Riza: Without his Alchemy he's just...Jean: A little brat who swears a lotMaes: An arrogant pipsqueakRoy: Useless. Just uselessAlphonse: Sorry big brother, I don't know how to add to that...Ed *starts to cry*: YOU'RE ALL PICKING ON ME!!!” - Hiromu Arakawa

39. “I have seen many cases like N. during the five years I've been in practice. I sometimes picture these unfortunates as men and women being pecked to death by predatory birds. The birds are invisible - at least until a psychiatrist who is good, or lucky, or both, sprays them with his version of Luminol and shines the right light on them - but they are nevertheless very real. The wonder is that so many OCDs manage to live productive lives, just the same. They work, they eat (often not enough or too much, it's true), they go to movies, they make love to their girlfriends and boyfriends, their wives and husbands . . . and all the time those birds are there, clinging to them and pecking away little bits of flesh.” - Stephen King

40. “I feel ill," [Howl] announced. "I'm going to bed, where I may die.” - Diana Wynne Jones

41. “She was going to go home after this and sip red wine and stare at the wall, I could tell. She would wonder why she was doing this, struggling against commercial interests at a corporate hospital when all she wanted to do was help people, and in the morning, when she walked out of her beautiful home and unlocked her convertible, she would remember.” - Max Berry

42. “Katherine of Aragon was speaking out for the women of the country, for the good wives who should not be put aside just because their husbands had taken a fancy to another, for the women who walked the hard road between kitchen, bedroom, church and childbirth. For the women who deserved more than their husband's whim.” - Philippa Gregory

43. “Human life is fiction's only theme.” - Eudora Welty

44. “The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.” - Jess C. Scott

45. “The white lily stands for purity. Artists for centuries have pictured the angel Gabriel coming to the virgin Mary with a spray of lillies in his hand, to announce that she is to be the mother of the Turks.” - Carroll Bryant

46. “Help me give up my addiction to Hope.” - Chuck Palahniuk

47. “Only death can finish the fight, everything else only interrupts the fighting.” - Andrzej Sapkowski

48. “The difference between real life and a story is that life has significance, while a story must have meaning.The former is not always apparent, while the latter always has to be, before the end.” - Vera Nazarian

49. “Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real.” - Grant Morrison

50. “Help me out,” I pleaded. “You’ve left me alone to deal with this situation, and now we’re being dealt the consequences.”I swore I heard Tom growl. I actually pulled the phone from my ear to stare at it to make sure it hadn’t turned into a tiny lion.” - Laura Kreitzer

51. “Fiction is written with reality and reality is written with fiction. We can write fiction because there is reality and we can write reality because there is fiction; everything we consider today to be myth and legend, our ancestors believed to be history and everything in our history includes myths and legends. Before the splendid modern-day mind was formed our cultures and civilizations were conceived in the wombs of, and born of, what we identify today as "fiction, unreality, myth, legend, fantasy, folklore, imaginations, fabrications and tall tales." And in our suddenly realized glory of all our modern-day "advancements" we somehow fail to ask ourselves the question "Who designated myths and legends as unreality? " But I ask myself this question because who decided that he was spectacular enough to stand up and say to our ancestors "You were all stupid and disillusioned and imagining things" and then why did we all decide to believe this person? There are many realities not just one. There is a truth that goes far beyond what we are told today to believe in. And we find that truth when we are brave enough to break away from what keeps everybody else feeling comfortable. Your reality is what you believe in. And nobody should be able to tell you to believe otherwise.” - C. JoyBell C.

52. “We'd become Japs, Jews, Niggers. We weren't before.” - HM Naqvi

53. “He never had nothing of his own before, except the kid, and he can’t claim but half the credit, there, maybe less. T.J.’s blond like his mamma, and stubborn, too. Won’t let nobody hold him except her. Cries every time his daddy picks him up. Every time he looks in those wet blue eyes, he nearly loses it. His own son hates him. Can’t blame the kid for having an opinion.” - Nadria Tucker

54. “He who writes books that aim to convince is a comedian, too, just a comedian. What has he got to offer others, apart from chains, still more chains? Fiction never liberated anyone. No one ever brought anything back from voyages through dream worlds.” - j.m.g. le clezio

55. “Lovers of print are simply confusing the plate for the food.” - Douglas Adams

56. “Fiction is the best the self-help book.” - Quinn Barrett

57. “But the purpose of the book is not the horror, it is horror's defeat.” - Terry Prachett talking about Neil Gaiman

58. “I’m an idiot for thinking that one performance would change anything.Maybe I should stop writing songs and start writing fiction.” - Elizabeth Eulberg

59. “Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.” - Wallace Stevens

60. “Kara knew all he recognized was T and A on a string and he was nothing more than a sleazy puppeeter , so long as there were souls for sale he was ready to buy ..” - Saira Viola

61. “I thought about writing the character as male, but then I would be forced to portray him as a woman in a man's body.” - Chris Stocking

62. “Being a single parent on a part-time basis is tricky to navigate. That is what a racing widow has to do.” - Aly Grady

63. “It's considered good sportsmanship not to pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.” - Mark Twain

64. “Keeping up the fiction. You have to keep it up, sometimes, no matter how you feel.” - Stephen King

65. “With the threat of them being potential spies or saboteurs, nobody will argue against our actions, and history itself will vindicate us.” - Evan Meekins

66. “I want to keep you, till the end of days.” - J.D. Robb

67. “Respect the dead, learn from them, do not follow or avenge them.” - Evan Meekins

68. “Hate did not give way to heroism.” - Evan Meekins

69. “It's a good day to do great things!” - Randy Lipnitzky

70. “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it."Goethe” - Paul Alan Fahey

71. “I noticed him right away. No, it wasn’t his lean, rugged face. Or the dark waves of shiny hair that hung just a little too long on his forehead. It wasn’t the slim, collarless biker jacket he wore, hugging his lean shoulders. It was the way he stood. The confident way he waited in the cafeteria line to get a slice of pizza. He didn’t saunter. He didn’t amble. He stood at the center, and let the other people buzz around him. His stance was straight and sure.” - Priya Ardis

72. “Be careful who you choose as your friends because their bad habits can become your bad habits. Choose wisely...we all have a choice in life.” - Mimi Jenkins

73. “Every good book should be entertaining. A good book will be more; it must not be less. Entertainment…is like a qualifying examination. If a fiction can’t provide that, we may be excused from inquiring into its higher qualities.” - C.S. Lewis

74. “And there it is! Bravo! I knew it was only a matter of time before Byron realized he had an audience. That man is simply incapable of keeping his shirt on when there are spectators. One Christmas Eve, he stripped his shirt off right in the middle of the choir's rendition of Oh Child of Bethlehem. Coincidentally, the next song was Come Let Us Adore Him and the imbecile actually launched into some interpretive dance.” - Kirt J. Boyd

75. “If you want the extra-ordinary, you've got to be willing to forsake the ordinary' - Annie Grimes in Mr Alhourani's Dead Man's Spots” - D.M. Lee

76. “My great-great grandfather and I were best of friends, although we never met.Fire and shipwreck orphan us – 140 years apart. We escape to imagination to survive our fate. There, midst flights of whimsy we find one another. Companionship quells our loneliness. We create fables and tales, shields against a harsh existence. We must battle animals and humans of prey.Together, he, the future abolitionist-publisher James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction, and I vault from glory-laden adventures to tragedy and then to triumph. I am Raji Singh and this is my story.” - Raji Singh

77. “If this is where you ask me to run around in my birthday suit, I’m not entirely comfortable with that,” I said, smirking.” - Laura Kreitzer

78. “I was murdered. Even though my heart continued to beat, I was very much deceased. All faded to black” - M.C. Webb

79. “I read nonfiction."She reared back as if offended.” - Anne Osterlund

80. “A small white rabbit with floppy ears and a twitching pink nose bounded out from the thick forest brush. Fingers twitching at his side, James stepped toward the small animal, a nervous giddiness creeping up inside of him.” - Brandi Salazar

81. “I liked reading biographies of writers, even if (as was the case with Monsieur Rabelais)I'd never read any of their actual writing. I flipped to the back and found the highlighted quote ("NEVER USE A HIGHLIGHTER IN MY BOOKS,” - John Green

82. “Real life doesn't grant us many of the more than useful possibilities people can come out with in fiction.” - Camilo Gomes Jr

83. “The pursuit of truth, not of facts, is the business of fiction.” - Oakley Hall

84. “The only wand you'll ever need is a better-feeling thought.” - C.G. Rousing

85. “If he's like any other man I've ever met, it's not my smile he's going to be looking at.” - Brad Thor

86. “A steampunk nationBaby pollution rises up then the loving comes arraigning 'causeOur art's official and only partially artificialAnd our heart's in the middle of sharp hardened shards of metal butThere's not where it settlesBecause it's beating to the steaming of God's hottest pot or kettleAnd now we face it, this creation we made toTo save our craving for a synthetic rebelnation it'sOur safeway they make into a pathetic revelationIn our steampunk nationOur steampunk nation” - Criss Jami

87. “Fiction writing is art. It therefore, has few mathematical or scientific limits to its evolution. The writer must always push forward, experiment, and strive to reach new levels of storytelling. Good fiction comments on reality, but transports the reader to a sensational world of wonder and interest that far outweighs tangible existence.” - Ron Gavalik

88. “Artists are dishonest creatures really. They foist their version of reality upon us while making it all up. Writers, painters, musicians, auteurs—they’re all the same.” - Tom Gething from "Sabotage"

89. “Fiction should be a place of lollipops and escape. Real life is depressing enough--I, for one, don't want to read about make believe misery, too.” - Nicole Christie

90. “Sometimes strange fiction, becomes grim reality.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

91. “Of course, the fact that Dostoevsky can tell a juicy story isn’t enough to make him great. If it were, Judith Krantz and John Grisham would be great fiction writers, and by any but the most commercial standards they’re not even very good.” - David Foster Wallace

92. “If a lioness spends her hours pacing back and forth in a cage of gold with the finest meats at her disposal, does that make her any less of a prisoner? If that same feline’s fangs are filed down to blunt, un-tearing teeth and her roar is silenced, can she still be called a lioness?” - Kristen Reed

93. “there were worse things than feeling guilty, like feeling dead.” - Lori Brighton

94. “Workshop Hermeticism, fiction for which the highest praise involves the words 'competent,' 'finished,' 'problem-free,' fiction over which Writing-Program pre- and proscriptions loom with the enclosing force of horizons: no character without Freudian trauma in accessible past, without near-diagnostic physical description; no image undissolved into regulation Updikean metaphor; no overture without a dramatized scene to 'show' what's 'told'; no denouement prior to an epiphany whose approach can be charted by and Freitag on any Macintosh.” - David Foster Wallace

95. “Fiction is just that–fiction. Yes, it is serious business, but it should also be taken for face value. It’s entertainment. It’s escapism. It’s 365 pages of relaxation.” - Rachael Wade

96. “It took me several minutes to persuade myself to watch the news. During which time I gave myself a stern talking to. That turned into me considering a local pub that would be the perfect place to drown my sorrows in a barrel of tequila, though after much introspection, I scratched the idea just to avoid needless drunken embarrassment. Then, admittedly, I contemplated pouncing Andrew for another steamy romp session. Despite its proven potency to assuage stress and tension, I decided now was not the time to indulge in explosive sexcapades.” - Laura Kreitzer

97. “If you act for self-gain then no good can come of it. If you act selflessly, then you act well for all and you must not be afraid.” - Rand Miller

98. “I heart my job. I get to make things up for a living.” - Michelle M. Pillow

99. “Annoyed?” said Sophie. “Why should I be annoyed? Someone only filled the castle with rotten aspic, and deafened everyone in Porthaven, and scared Calcifer to a cinder, and broke a few hundred hearts. Why should that annoy me?” - Diana Wynne Jones

100. “A related question is where in time to begin. Should you begin far back in a character's past and move forward, or should you begin in the present and make use of flashbacks only where necessary? ... If the material with which you want to open the story is from the character's deep past, then there has to be an important relationship between what has happened in the past and what is about to happen. In other words, is the material with which you open the story an arrow pointing toward the unified effect?” - Julie Checkoway

101. “Tell me a story,' demanded Fireflyer.'Why? Do you eat them, too, then?''Only the ohs and ayes and ees and oos. The Kays are too spikey and the zeds are too buzzzy and the ones with the dots get stuck in your teeth and the esses sometimes slide down inside your vest and tickle.” - Geraldine McCaughrean

102. “Not everyone can be rich,' Peter went on. 'Not everyone can be strong or clever. Not everyone can be beautiful. But we can ALL be brave! If we tell ourselves we can do it; if we say to our hearts, 'don't jump about'; if we carry ourselves like heroes... we can all be brave! We can all look Danger in the face and be glad to meet it, and draw our swords and say, 'Have at you, Danger! You don't scare me!' Courage is just there for the taking; you don't need money to buy it. You don't need to go to school to learn it! Courage is the thing, isn't it? Don't you think so, people? Aren't I right? Courage is the thing! All goes if courage goes!” - Geraldine McCaughrean

103. “Dar cine iubeşte e dator să împărtăşească destinul fiinţei iubite.” - Mihail Bulgakov

104. “Charlee has my arm. She has my arm—my arm that’s rigid from pleasure, from her touch—in her little fingers. She holds my other one, too and she’s right there, that sweet candy perfume stripping the rest of the strength from my body, and it escapes in a soft, breathy sigh.” - Rebecca Berto

105. “The time of my departure is here. Place your hand gently on the soil beside my own, and feel the rumble of the earth beneath. The power of a thousand thousands is coming... evil warriors fighting against the Noble One. Here I stand with Him. Take up your sword and come with me, for the Prince is calling. And if you do not go... who will?” - Chuck Black

106. “It's odd to imagine, of course: you pass a car on a lonely rural highway; you sit beside a man in a diner and share views with him; you wait behind a customer checking into a motel, a friendly man with a winning smile and twinkling hazel eyes, who's happy to fill you in on his life's story and wants you to like him - odd to think this man is cruising around with a loaded pistol, making up his mind about which bank he'll soon rob.' - Richard Ford, Canada” - Richard Ford

107. “Nothing makes you think you might need years of therapy like saying the word breasts in front of your mother.” - Katie McGarry

108. “How can I be more important than someone else? Isn’t every life important?” - Shelley K. Wall

109. “What's more important than recycling? Producing something to recycle.” - Gordon Osmond

110. “I knew nothing of death, and, for some unexplainable reason, I was beginning to feel guilty for that. -Jessica” - Shannon A Thompson