top of page
"If there were a better, clearer, shorter way of saying what the fiction says, then why not scrap the fiction?"
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Fiction quotes

"What I'd show you is much more bizarre than anything we have looked at so far, and I warn you in advance that the first impulse will be to laugh. That's all right. Laugh if you must. Just don't take your eye off what you see, for even in your imagination, here is a creature who can do you damage."

"Novelists are basically inviting their readers to play a game of pretend. That's what fiction is: a game of pretend."

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

"Imminent GM bankruptcy was always fiction, created by Wall Street and the media."

"Where do you think they've gone?' he said.'Where what?' said Lady Ramkin, temporarily halted.'The dragons. You know. Errol and his wi - female.''Oh, somewhere isolated and rocky, I should imagine,' said Lady Ramkin. 'Favourite country for dragons.''But it - she's a magical animal,' said Vimes. 'What'll happen when the magic goes away?'Lady Ramkin gave him a shy smile.'Most people seem to manage,' she said.She reached across the table and touched his hand."

"A man walked across the moors from Razorback to Lancre town without seeing a single marshlight, head-less dog, strolling tree, ghostly coach or comet, and had to be taken in by a tavern and given a drink to unsteady his nerves."

"In camp was found a book, the first of the kind I had ever seen, in which I was made a great hero, slaying Indians by the hundreds."

"Flakes of snow swirled and danced across the porch. The Overlook faced it as it had for nearly three-quarters of a century, its darkened windows now bearded with snow, indifferent to the fact it was now cut off from the world. Inside its shell the three of them went about their early evening routine, like microbes trapped in the intestine of a monster."

"Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity."
Explore more quotes by J. M. Coetzee

"The idea of writer as sage is pretty much dead today. I would certainly feel very uncomfortable in the role."

"There are works of literature whose influence is strong but indirect because it is mediated through the whole of the culture rather than immediately through imitation. Wordsworth is the case that comes to mind."

"Elizabeth, Lady C, claims to be writing at the limits of language. Would it not be insulting to her if I were diligently to follow after her, explaining what she means but is not smart enough to say?"

"As for September 11, let us not too easily grant the Americans possession of that date on the calendar. Like May 1 or July 14 or December 25, September 11 may seem full of significance to some people, while to other people it is just another day."

"My response, a dubious and hesitant one, is that it has been and may continue to be, in the time that is left to me, more productive to live out the question than to try to answer it in abstract terms."

"Strictly speaking, my interest is not in legal rights for animals but in a change of heart towards animals."

"I see no marks of Wordsworths style of writing or style of thinking in my own work, yet Wordsworth is a constant presence when I write about human beings and their relations to the natural world."
bottom of page