134 Fiction Quotes

In the realms of fiction, words have the power to transport us to fantastical worlds, evoke deep emotions, and ignite our imaginations. Whether it's through the profound insights of our favorite characters or the poetic prose of masterful storytellers, fiction offers a treasure trove of memorable quotes. Here, we present a carefully curated collection of the top 134 Fiction Quotes, each one a testament to the magic and wisdom that lies within the pages of beloved books. Dive in and let these poignant and inspiring lines remind you why fiction holds a special place in our hearts.

1. “We are born to love as we are born to die, and between the heartbeats of those two great mysteries lies all the tangled undergrowth of our tiny lives. There is nowhere to go but through. And so we walk on, lost, and lost again, in the mapless wilderness of love.” - Tim Farrington

2. “One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. The tale is the map that is the territory.You must remember this.” - Neil Gaiman

3. “The story you are about to read is a work of fiction. Nothing - and everything - about it is real.” - Todd Strasser

4. “I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.” - Bertrand Russell

5. “A good book isn't written, it's rewritten.” - Phyllis A. Whitney

6. “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” - Virginia Woolf

7. “This book is so interesting. I always wonder what's going to happen next.” - Neal Shusterman

8. “I know there are people who don't read fiction at all, and I find it hard to understand how they can bear to be inside the same head all the time.” - Diane Setterfield

9. “He has the memory of a convict, the balls of a fireman, and the eyesight of a housebreaker. When there is crime to fight, Landsman tears around Sitka like a man with his pant leg caught on a rocket. It's like there's a film score playing behind him, heavy on the castanets. The problem comes in the hours when he isn't working, when his thoughts start blowing out the open window of his brain like pages from the blotter. Sometimes it takes a heavy paperweight to pin them down.” - Michael Chabon

10. “A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.” - Diane Setterfield

11. “From a distance,' he says, 'my car looks just like every other car on the freeway, and Sarah Byrnes looks just like the rest of us. And if she's going to get help, she'll get it from herself or she'll get it from us. Let me tell you why I brought this up. Because the other day when I saw how hard it was for Mobe to go to the hospital to see her, I was embarrassed that I didn't know her better, that I ever laughed at one joke about her. I was embarrassed that I let some kid go to school with me for twelve years and turned my back on pain that must be unbearable. I was embarrassed that I haven't found a way to include her somehow the way Mobe has.'Jesus. I feel tears welling up, and I see them running down Ellerby's cheeks. Lemry better get a handle on this class before it turns into some kind of therapy group.So,' Lemry says quietly, 'your subject will be the juxtaposition of man and God in the universe?'Ellerby shakes his head. 'My subject will be shame.” - Chris Crutcher

12. “To know you will be lonely is not the same as being lonely.” - Peter Carey

13. “There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.” - Doris May Lessing

14. “In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies.” - Lauren Groff

15. “I imagined the sound of whips on black backs and the roar of the overseer over the cry of mothers being separated from their babies. I pulled on all the strength I had not to shot out every valuable leaded pane of glass in that stinking house.” - Linda Leigh hargrove

16. “But then, that’s the beauty of writing stories—each one is an exploratory journey in search of a reason and a shape. And when you find that reason and that shape, there’s no feeling like it."[Peter Wild Interviews TC Boyle, 3:AM Magazine, June 2003]” - T.C. Boyle

17. “Rogerson," I asked him sweetly as we sat watching a video in the pool house, "where would I find the pelagic zone?""In the open sea," he said. "Now shut up and eat your Junior Mints.” - Sarah Dessen

18. “Fantasy is storytelling with the beguiling power to transform the impossible into the imaginable, and to reveal our own “real” world in a fresh and truth-bearing light.” - Leonard S. Marcus

19. “A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.” - Tim O'Brien

20. “Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.” - Khaled Hosseini

21. “Literature differs from life in that life is amorphously full of detail, and rarely directs us toward it, wheras literature teaches us to notice. Literature makes us better noticers of life; we get to practice on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature; which in turn makes us better readers of life.” - James Wood

22. “They were going to expel me. Mom convinced them not to... and got them to apologize," Fern said, almost embarrassed.Really?" Eddie said. "See, Sammy, you don't mess with the Commander, do you?" Eddie playfully hit his younger brother in the stomach with the back of his hand.When the Commander says jump...," Sam started.We say, 'yes ma'am, how high?'" Eddie ended with a forehead salute.” - Jennifer Anne Kogler

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

24. “Arvid reste sig för att gå. —Nej, sitt! –sitt!, sitt!—. Om någon hund varit närvarande, skulle han genast suttit.” // “Arvid se levantó para irse. —¡No, siéntate! –¡siéntate!, ¡siéntate!—. Si hubiera habido algún perro presente, éste se hubiera sentado de inmediato”.” - August Strindberg

25. “I am a politician which means I am a liar and a crook. When I am not kissing babies I am stealing their lollypops.” - Tom Clancy

26. “Revenge is the sweetest of all human experiences, its sweetness stays forver. Page 41. THE SCALPEL – GAME BENEATH (www.hsrissam.com” - H.S. Rissam

27. “Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it.” - Douglas Adams

28. “When you see a small change in your life it means its a huge change in personality and your trait” - Natasha Friend

29. “You're only young once, but you can be immature forever” - Germaine Greer

30. “For the first six months, all whe wanted was honest labor, finely crafted novels, and surf.” - Eve Babitz

31. “Valerik spit to one side. "We laugh at religion's brand of love, forms and rules that keep the poor feeding from the church's coffers. It is in deed." "I agree. That kind of love is porcelain-coated balls of dung.But what of true affection?...” - Ted Dekker

32. “Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.” - Stephenie Meyer

33. “As I raced out of the office, I could hear Emily rapid-fire dialing four-digit extensions and all but screaming, 'She's on her way-- tell everyone.' It took me only three seconds to wind through the hallways and pass through the fashion department, but I had already heard panicked cries of 'Emily said she's on her way in' and 'Miranda's coming!' and a particularly blood curdling cry of 'She's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!” - Lauren Weisberger

34. “While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices... Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

35. “The novel is perhaps the highest art form because it so closely resembles life: it is about human relationships. It's technique, page by page, resembles our technique of living day by day--a way of relating.” - Joyce Carol Oates

36. “Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do― to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.” - Stephen King

37. “Ask any comedian, tennis player, chef. Timing is everything.” - Meg Rosoff

38. “Peeta opens his mouth for the first bite without hesitation. He swallows, then frowns slightly. "They're very sweet.""Yes they're sugar berries. My mother makes jam from them. Haven't you've ever had them before?" I say, poking the next spoonful in his mouth."No," he says, almost puzzled. "But they taste familiar. Sugar berries?""Well, you can't get them in the market much, they only grow wild," I say. Another mouthful goes down. Just one more to go."They're sweet as syrup," he says, taking the last spoonful. "Syrup." His eyes widen as he realizes the truth. I clamp my hand over his mouth and nose hard, forcing him to swallow instead of spit. He tries to make himself vomit the stuff up, but it's too late, he's already losing consciousness. Even as he fades away, I can see in his eyes what I've done is unforgiveable.I sit back on my heels and look at him with a mixture of sadness and satisfaction. A stray berry stains his chin and I wipe it away. "Who can't lie, Peeta?" I say, even though he can't hear me.” - Suzanne Collins

39. “Sometimes when you get older — and I’m not talking about you, I’m talking generally, because everyone ages differently — things you think on and wish on start to seem real. And then you believe them, and before you know it they’re part of your history, and if someone challenges you on them and says they’re not true — why, then you get offended because you can’t remember the first part. All you know is that you’ve been called a liar.” - Sara Gruen

40. “Longing surged up within me. I wanted it. Oh God, I wanted it. I didn't want to hear Jerome chastise me for my "all lowlifes, all the time" seduction policy. I wanted to come home and tell someone about my day. I wanted to go out dancing on the weekends. I wanted to take vacations together. I wanted someone to hold me when I was upset, when the ups and downs of the world pushed me too far. I wanted someone to love. ” - Richelle Mead

41. “...he had a way of taking your hand which made it clear he'd have to be the one to let go.” - Alice Hoffman

42. “Once upon a time there was a young lady who lived in a marsh, and her name was Poison.” - Chris Wooding

43. “The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time.” - Wilkie Collins

44. “Bonnie, believe in me. I’ll save you.I remember how to fly.” - L.J. Smith

45. “That the stars guide us, but do not compel us. It is our free will that determines the outcome of all things. God does impose his will on us, rather he makes it known and allows us to choose if we will follow it.” - Kathleen McGowan

46. “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

47. “A witch, a vampire, and a pixy walk into a bar, I thought as I led the way into the Squirrel’s End. It was early, and the sun had yet to set when the door swung shut behind Jenks, sealing us in the warm air smelling faintly of smoke. Immediately Nick yanked it open to come in behind us. And there’s the punch line.” - Kim Harrison

48. “Big lots,' I said, seeing the eighty-year-old oaks and shady lawns. The houses were set way back and had iron fences and stone drives. The harder to hear your neighbors scream, my dear,' was David’s answer, and I sent my head up and down in agreement.” - Kim Harrison

49. “The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.” - Charles Walter Stansby Williams

50. “Patience is only a virtue when there is something worth waiting for.” - Lauren Willig

51. “I keep warning and warning, and nobody seems willing to listen. One of these days someone is going to wake up to the fact that I'm serious when I say never to attack my sister without looking over your shoulder for me. (Rhoan)” - Keri Arthur

52. “The masses-I love em-they rush for red lights, risking everything to capture a few seconds, only to get home and waste their lives.” - Arthur Nersesian

53. “Remember, any lie you are told, even deliberately, is often a more significant fact than a truth told in all sincerity.” - Halldor Laxness

54. “History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of another nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality. Furthermore, history and legend have the same goal; to depict eternal man beneath momentary man.” - Victor Hugo

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

56. “But wishes are only granted in fairy tales.” - Simone Elkeles

57. “as soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency.” - Slavoj Žižek

58. “There's always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is consciously inserted. Partly because it won't reflect the storyteller's true beliefs, it will only reflect what he BELIEVES he believes, or what he thinks he should believe or what he's been persuaded of. But when you write without deliberately expressing moral teachings, the morals that show up are the ones you actually live by. The beliefs that you don't even think to question, that you don't even notice-- those will show up. And that tells much more truth about what you believe than your deliberate moral machinations.” - Orson Scott Card

59. “I think fiction allows us to sit for a while with people we would rather not meet.” - Uwem Akpan

60. “Surely Tillie knew glitter on wrinkled cleavage was a sin.” - Julie Anne Lindsey

61. “Over the green squares of the fields and the low curves of a wood there rose in the distance a grey, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his gaze fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so deep.” - Arthur Conan Doyle

62. “Now I think I understand how this world can overcome a man.” - James "The Rev" Sullivan

63. “Walking out into the night with a water fey was all kinds of stupid. Heck, Kelpies eat people. They may not play with their food as creatively as the Each Uisge, but dead is dead.” - E.J. Stevens

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

65. “Listen." Jennifer reverted, "I didn't mean anything by all of that before. I understand what you were trying to do and ..." She struggled for the right words. "Sweetie, like love, people don't live inside of life, life lives inside of you. Open yourself up to it and there's no stopping your heart.” - Carroll Bryant

66. “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

67. “To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.” - Umberto Eco

68. “When I began to write fiction that I knew would be published as science fiction, [and] part of what I brought to it was the critical knowledge that science fiction was always about the period in which it was written.” - William Gibson

69. “The ocean swells around us. Sometimes, we are in a bowl of water and sometimes on the top of the lip. The horizon curves.We are sitting on top of the world.In theory, anyone is on the top of their world at every moment, given that the Earth is truly round. But, it’s hard to see that in a subway under New York City and completely obvious out here.” - Lexis De Rothschild

70. “The Witcher had a knife to his throat. He was wallowing in a wooden tub, brimfull with soapsuds, his head thrown agains the slippery rim. The bitter taste of soap lingered in his mouth as the knife, blunt as a doorknob, scraped his Adam's apple painfully and moved towards his chin with a grating sound.” - Andrzej Sapkowski

71. “When dancing with a pit bull, it's always best to let him lead.” - Michael Barnett

72. “Sow a thought and reap an action, sow an action and reap a habit, sow a habit and reap a destiny - John Cleaver” - Dan Wells

73. “I remember when I was twenty-five,” he said. “No client comes to you when you’re twenty-five. It’s like when you are looking for a doctor. You don’t want the new one that just graduated. You don’t want the very old one, the one shaking, the one twenty years past his prime. You want the seasoned one who has done it so many times he can do it in his sleep though. Same thing with attorneys.” - Daniel Amory

74. “At the sound of her name, Lucia’s blue eyes honed in on me. She cocked her head to the side as if puzzled. “Why me?” she wondered.“Lucia, you exploded with power after Ehno was killed.” I shot Ehno an apologetic look. “I felt your sorrow before I even knew something was wrong. It hit me like a freight train of boulders. You made the sky rain fireballs with red lightning. Need I say more?” - Laura Kreitzer

75. “And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.” - Virginia Woolf

76. “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.

77. “Perhaps the critics are right: this generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation--who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him--but he must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope--qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for, and are not commonly come by with much ease, either by a critic's formula or by a critic's yearning.” - Bill Styron

78. “Fiction---good fiction, anyway---is dream made flesh, given purpose and drive, and set on a quest to show us the best in us and to give us the power and the tools to dream beyond reality's 'merely good enough' to a vision of what is truly great......and then to give us the stories of men and women of character who in turn inspire those of us who dare to reach for the truly great within ourselves.THAT is why you write fiction.” - Holly Lisle

79. “(F)iction is...what ought to have been, not what actually was. At least, not exactly.” - Charles McCarry

80. “Having vision is much more than just being visual.” - Heru Ofori-Atta

81. “Any self-defense class worth its salt will tell you thatyou don’t pull out a weapon unless you intend to use it.The same should apply to ballsy remarks.” - Henry Mosquera

82. “I’m not smarter than you, I’m more knowledgeable than you, and that’s only because I’m older than you. Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

83. “Neither novels or their readers benefit from any attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.” - John Green

84. “I stare at him. "You can't risk not winning. Not because of me." Sean doesn't lift his eyes from the counter. "We make our move when you make yours. You on the inside, me on the outside. Corr can come from the middle of the pack; he's done it before. It's one side you won't have to worry about." I say, "I will not be your weakness, Sean Kendrick." Now he looks at me. He says, very softly, "It's late for that, Puck.” - Maggie Stiefvater

85. “Vane grabbed me. “DuLac, let’s chat.”Chat. British-speak for “Stand still while I yell at you.” - Priya Ardis

86. “Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.''You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry.''Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one in the picture?''Before either.''I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry,' said the lad.'Then you shall come; and you will come, too, Basil, won't you?''I can't, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do.''Well, then you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray.''I should like that awfully.'The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. 'I shall stay with the real Dorian,' he said, sadly.” - Oscar Wilde

87. “É preciso que a realidade em mim seja já pura invenção para que eu a reconstrua, para que eu a cante.” - Manuel da Fonseca

88. “Different versions of a true story” - Margi Preus

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

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

91. “There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.” - Neil Gaiman

92. “They were in a long line, an endless line, and as they burst from the wood there was an instant, the smallest part of a heartbeat, when all Catelyn saw was the moonlight on the point of their lance, as if a thousand willowisps were coming down the ridge, wreathed in silver. Then she blinked, and they were only men, rushing down to kill or die.” - George R.R. Martin

93. “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

94. “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

95. “Fiction, however, sometimes ensures disappointment with reality” - Miguel Syjuco

96. “She shook her head. She was so pale under the diffuse lamp-light that she looked almost transparent, as if Simon could have looked right through her. The way, he supposed, he always had.” - Cassandra Clare

97. “Woe is the mind of the common man, so easily controlled by the prospect of an ambition never to be truly attained. This is what tyrants live on and by what commoners are blissfully burdened and subdued.” - Evan Meekins

98. “Let your dissent fuel you, your anger inspire you, your rage convey you, and your fury strike a chilling fear onto the spines of your enemies.” - Evan Meekins

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

100. “If the world explore all my dark fantasy, will change for the better”.” - Alexandar Tomov

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

102. “Dreams only come true if youpoint yourself in their direction” - Tina Reber

103. “¡Dios bendiga los tiempos antiguos, en que existían cosas raras...!” - Knut Hamsun

104. “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

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

106. “There are more than straight good and evil, aye, even more than law or disorders or fence-sittin'. There's prejudice, whimsey, affection, superstition, habit, upbringing, alliance, pride, society, morals, animosity, preference, values, religon, circumstance, humor, perversity, honor, vengeance, jealousy, frustration...hundreds o' factors, from the past and in every present moment, as decides what some one person'll do in an individious situation.” - Eve Forward Villains By Necessity

107. “The unification of worlds is an author's priority, as one of them surely resides forbidden to the public.” - Paul Andreas Wunderlich

108. “Perhaps it was that I wanted to see what I had learned, what I had read, what I had imagined, that I would never be able to see the city of London without seeing it through the overarching scrim of every description of it I had read before. When I turn the corner into a small, quiet, leafy square, am I really seeing it fresh, or am I both looking and remembering? [...]This is both the beauty and excitement of London, and its cross to bear, too. There is a tendency for visitors to turn the place into a theme park, the Disney World of social class, innate dignity, crooked streets, and grand houses, with a cavalcade of monarchs as varied and cartoony as Mickey Mouse, Snow White, and, at least in the opinion of various Briths broadhseets, Goofy.They come, not to see what London is, or even what it was, but to confirm a kind of picture-postcard view of both, all red telephone kiosks and fog-wreathed alleyways.” - Anna Quindlen

109. “There are two ways to ruin any chances of leading a happy life. The first is to chase a goal twenty-four hours a day, day after day, and gladly give up all the little laughs and joys that life has to offer in exchange for that ever-elusive moment of jubilation. The second way is far worse, in that it NEVER fails. You know what it is, Sam? Falling in love with someone who chases a goal twenty four hours a day.” - Ali Sheikh

110. “I'm not myself," she offered, guiltily. She softened around Tik Tok, and when she did she was, for those rare moments, girlish.He smiled. "You can never say that. You're just a piece of yourself right now that you don't like.” - Jodi Lynn Anderson

111. “Before unearthing this letter, I had questioned myself about the ways in which a book can be infinite. I could think of nothing other than a cyclic volume, a circular one. A book whose last page was identical with the first, a book which had the possibility of continuing indefinitely.” - Jorge Luis Borges

112. “William slapped him on the shoulder, sending Sex into rapturous convulsions. “Before we do this, I’ve got one question for you. And you can’t lie. This is too important.”A bit sick to his stomach at what such a debaucher could want to know, Paris cast his attention to the black-haired, blue-eyed he-devil. “Ask.”“Are you going to suggest I kiss you for good luck or strength or whatever it is your sex demon needs?”That earned the warrior a two-fingered salute.“So that’s a no?” William asked.Paris worked his jaw. “Here, let me help you off the cliff to the drawbridge.” With no more warning, he shoved William over the ledge. He thought he heard a fading, “ So not cool,” from the bastard as he fell…fell…Splat.” - Gena Showalter

113. “I am going to show you great and mighty things which no one has ever seen before.... I am going to take you places where no one has ever been. I am going to take you to heights where no one has ever reached. If you will only come to me with all your heart, I will do a mighty work in you, which no man can undo but yourself.” - M. J. Chrisman

114. “If you have a big heart, you will live a large life.” - Yvonne Jayne

115. “The web is a dangerous place for a mind begging to slack off and be distracted by nonsense.” - Michelle M. Pillow

116. “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

117. “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

118. “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

119. “As a historian, I found myself all too often treating my historical subjects like fictional characters, malleable entities that could be made to do one thing or another, whose motivations could be speculated upon endlessly, and whose missing actions could be reconstructed and approximated based on assessments of prior and later behaviors. It was one of the hazards with working a fragmentary source base. You had little scraps, like puzzle pieces, and you could put them together as best you could. But no matter how faithful you tried to be to the historical record, there would always be that element of guesswork, of imagination, of (if we're being totally honest) fiction.” - Lauren Willig

120. “Firen didn’t waste any time setting up the meeting with Egnatious. The following day she was in such a rush to tell me about it that she burst into my room without knocking and found Andrew and me in an intimate and compromising position reminiscent of the game Twister. Also, I cannot confirm or deny if there was food involved. Let’s just say I toppled over in embarrassment, taking Andrew down with me in a great heap. Firen didn’t fare any better, as she nearly knocked herself out when she ran into the doorframe in an attempt to escape. We were both scarred for life, especially after Firen apologized for walking in on our “naked fun time,” which was apparently what Joseph called it. There were some things people should never know, and that was one of them.” - Laura Kreitzer

121. “What would you suggest?” one of the Italian officials asked.“We do have a highly-advanced biological device called the Illuminator,” Joseph chimed in” - Laura Kreitzer

122. “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

123. “Without making a conscious decision to do so, Drew grabbed a fistful of her ridiculous blond wig and tugged.Some of her hair came with it and he felt a moment of satisfaction when she howled. Bianca’s real hair was a matted mess against her head. He looked at the wig in his hand and moved his gaze to the water fountain.Bianca’s eyes widened. “Don’t do it. Don’t you dare.” “Don’t do what? Don’t do this?” He dangled the wig above the fountain.She raised her hands and crept toward him. “Just give it back, Drew, and we’ll be even. Okay?”“Aaawww, is Bianca getting worried? Poor baby.”“Come on.”“Say you’re sorry.” He shook it up and down.“What? No way.”With a shrug, he tossed the wig into the water fountain.” - Lindy Zart

124. “Fiction is Truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story.” - Rudyard Kipling

125. “A town is a thing like a colonial animal. A town has a nervous system and a head and shoulders and feet. A town is a thing separate from all other towns alike. And a town has a whole emotion. How news travels through a town is a mystery not easily to be solved. News seems to move faster than small boys can scramble and dart to tell it, faster than women can call it over the fences.” - John Steinbeck

126. “All writers struggle at some point with the problem of balance between authority and involvement, seduction and revelation. Specifically, beginning writers wonder how much description to employ, and more advanced writers ask how much plot is too much or too little. And there is no better place to find answers than in the Victoria's Secret catalogue--or in any ad for lingerie--where the arts of seduction and revelation are so successfully practiced. After all, the secret of the effective lingerie ad is the secret of effective storytelling--to provide, moment by moment, the illusion of imminent expose, to give the viewer (read: reader) the uncanny sense that something fundamentally compelling is always just about to be revealed. Lingerie ads and storytelling balance the veiled and the unveiled, the seen and the unseen, the shown and the about-to-be-shown. In short, it is the art of the tease, the craft of selective 'coverage,' that, not just in lingerie but in storytelling, works to enthrall.” - Julie Checkoway

127. “I wonder, what kind of life would I have had if it hadn’t been for my mother’s tea-and-cookie parties? Perhaps it’s because of them that I’ve never thought of women as my enemies, as territories I have to conquer, but always as allies and friends - which I believe is the reason why they were friendly to me in turn. I’ve never met those she-devils you hear about: they must be too busy with those men who look upon women as a fortress they have to attack, lay waste and left in ruins.” - Stephen Vizinczey

128. “Jesus honey, your husband ain’t dead, he’s in hiding.” He growled, watching her visibly flinch. - Jase Devlin” - Nina D'Angelo

129. “All humans are insane, they exists because insanity exists.” - Prakhar Bansal

130. “Normal people have rock collections, shell collections, key ring collections and stamp collections. (The Captain had even known somebody with a letterbox collection.) But a people collection? That had to be the most bizarre one he'd come across. Not to mention the most unethical.” - Elizabeth Newton

131. “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

132. “I never take out clients. It’s bad policy.” He looked me straight in the eyes as he said it. Reaching across for the glove compartment, his arm accidentally brushed my leg.” - Gabrielle Black

133. “A man [Joyce] whose earliest stories appeared next to the manure prices in the Irish Homestead knew that columns of prose, like columns of shit, could both recultivate the earth.” - Declan Kiberd

134. “The old are often forgotten. Life moves on without a care for those who wish to remain in the past. We tend to talk too much because it’s rare that we’re listened to.” - Tami Egonu