Fiction Genres Quotes

I mainly read histories and biographies, but I'm also a big fan of Graham Swift and Thomas Hardy.

Also, most people read fiction as an escape - and I wonder whether my books aren't a bit too grounded in reality to reach the widest possible audience.

When I was in my early to mid-teens, that was a very heavy diet of science fiction and fantasy, so those were the kinds of books I tended to imagine writing someday, or even began to try to write.

When reading fiction, we cannot automatically assume that what we read is fact.

I've always read broadly: literary fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, chick lit, historical, dystopian, nonfiction, memoir. I've even read Westerns. I prefer female protagonists.

I read a lot of fantasy as a kid. I read 'The Hobbit' and all of the 'Lord of the Rings' books, but I also read a lot of realism like 'The Outsiders.'

I hardly ever read mainstream fiction that deals with life as it is. I like an element of fantasy, something that isn't quite of the real world.

I have never written a book that I wouldn't want to read. The trouble is, I love to read horror, sf, fantasy, mysteries, hero pulps - romantic fiction, in the original, traditional meaning of that term, as opposed to mimetic fiction. But most of all, I love thrillers.

I love science fiction, and one of the things I love about it is that it's so very different. You can read stuff that's just fast-paced adventure, and the characters are cardboard, but who cares, because they're heroes, and we love it. And you can read stuff that's really deep character, and everything in between.

I think one of the reasons that I like fiction versus nonfiction is that I myself can kind of disappear from the story.

Science fiction was never my thing. I have no interest in it.

The world of fiction is a sovereign world that comes to life in the author's head and follows the rules of art, of literature. And that is the major difference that is reflected in the form of the work, in its language and its plot. An author invents every aspect of a fiction, every detail.

I define science fiction as the art of the possible. Fantasy is the art of the impossible.

The novel wins by points, the short story by knockout.

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

I read a lot when I'm away. I love courtroom dramas and I'm always looking for new authors.

I think there are readers out there and I don't think the book is dead. And more importantly I don't think readers have to choose between literary and commercial fiction.

Sometimes I worry that people who read my fiction think that I am making some kind of thesis statement.

I'm just writing what I know. I've never been much of a reader of fantasy, and I think you write what you, personally, enjoy reading.

But to me, 'Worlds' is meant as kind of an appreciation of fiction and stories and escapism and fantasy.

I don't separate my books into historical novels and the rest. To me, they're all made-up worlds, and both kinds are borne out of curiosity, some investigation into the past.

I didn't read much of anything till I was 15, except Alistair MacLean and Michael Moorcock - the sword and sorcery novels - when I was about 13 or 14.

Novels written by university professors and set in the groves of academe are far more rigidly predictable than anything but the most routine science fiction novel, but they have escaped the stigma of being labeled as genre.

If utopian fiction became the new trend, I wouldn't read it.

A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.