Top 100 Genre Fiction Quotes
#1. Fiction is people having extraordinary reactions to ordinary things, but in genre fiction, they have ordinary reactions to extraordinary things.
Mary Robinette Kowal
#2. If I'm going to invest the time in a novel, I want something more than the entertainment you get out of most genre fiction.
Glen Duncan
#3. I can hear some of you groaning as you read this section. "Great," you're saying. "I have to put a theme in my book? Themes are only for that 'high literature' stuff that gets taught in universities, not for my nice, entertaining genre fiction.
Libbie Hawker
#4. I don't mean that literary fiction is better than genre fiction, On the contrary; novels can perform two functions and most perform only one.
Mark Haddon
#5. A predilection for genre fiction is symptomatic of a kind of arrested development.
Thomas M. Disch
#6. Romance tends to be the whipping boy of genre fiction.
Lauren Willig
#7. I actually started out as a writer and then converted to illustration because I realised that there was a dearth of good illustrators in genre fiction, at least in Australia at that time.
Shaun Tan
#8. If I'm a genre writer, I'm at the edge. In the end, they do work like genre fiction. You have a hero, there's a love interest, there's always a chase, there's fighting of some kind. You don't have to do that in a novel. But you do in a genre novel.
Alan Furst
#9. If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.
Yann Martel
#10. So, fuck 'em, we say. Fuck the mundane of Mainstream, the elitists of Literature. We're GENRE FICTION and proud of it, proud to wear that brand painted on the backs of our biker's jackets.
Hal Duncan
#11. The biggest challenge of my career, which is something that authors of genre fiction face all the time, is writing something fresh and new and at the same time meeting reader expectations.
Julia Quinn
#12. If I had stayed purely a horror writer or thriller writer, I might have more of a presence in those particular genres, and I'd certainly have more individual titles to market, since it's much easier to write pure genre fiction than it is to create something different.
Chet Williamson
#13. When I was writing for children, I was writing genre fiction. It was like making a good chair. However beautiful it looked, it needed four legs of the same length, it had to be the right height and it had to be comfortable.
Mark Haddon
#14. Genre fiction was looked at as a ghetto, but I wonder now if realist fiction, sealing itself off in the glum suburbs of a dysfunctional society, denying the use of imagination, was the ghetto.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#15. I like to take certain aspects of genre fiction and modify them in my own way. 'Your Republic Is Calling You' follows the form of a spy novel, but it leads readers into a world of Kafkaesque irrationality.
Kim Young-ha
#16. The distinction between literary and genre fiction is stupid and pernicious. It dates back to a feud between Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James. James won, and it split literature into two streams. But it's a totally false dichotomy.
George R R Martin
#17. I love outsider stories. And I also like a lot of genre fiction, too. So I wanted to write a literary book that flirted with thriller and fantasy and even science fiction. I wanted the coming-of-age story and the love story to be about "outsiderdom" - one of the themes I am most interested in.
Porochista Khakpour
#18. In ages past, there was less of a dichotomy between good literature and fun reads. In the twentieth century, I think, it split apart, so that you had serious fiction and genre fiction.
Ruth Glick
#19. Genre fiction, as Terry Pratchett has pointed out, is a stew. You take stuff out of the pot, you put stuff back. The stew bubbles on.
Neil Gaiman
#20. If you can't see the joy and wonder to be found in genre fiction, that's your problem, not mine.
William Meikle
#21. Marshall Jevons is the pioneer for integrating economics and detective fiction, and The Mystery of the Invisible Hand is another fine effort in this genre.
Tyler Cowen
#22. All fiction is a process of imagining: whatever you write, in whatever genre or medium, your task is to make things up convincingly and interestingly and new.
Neil Gaiman
#23. Good horror offers a sense of an upended, lawless world and that's appealing to anyone who grew up feeling like an outsider.
Christopher Rice
#24. For some reason, when people meet me and find out I'm a writer they always ask if I write children's books. Um ... please don't let your kids read my books. Well, unless your kids are in their 30s or something ... then yeah, they're old enough. LOL
Michelle M. Pillow
#25. My point has always been that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, science fiction has been the most important genre there is.
Iain Banks
#26. I write fiction. It may have mystery, it may have horror, it may have fantasy, it may have love, but like life, it's all the same genre.
Don Roff
#27. I read so much science fiction when I was young. I believe science fiction is the genre for exploration and to learn about possibilities via book.
Bob Mayer
#28. War has always been a part of science fiction. Even before the birth of SF as a standalone genre in 1926, speculative novels such as 'The Battle of Dorking' from 1871 showed how SF's trademark 'what if' scenarios could easily encompass warfare.
Paul Di Filippo
#29. My advice is to write about what you are interested in. If you read science fiction and fantasy, then write in that genre. If you read romance novels, then try writing one.
Michael Scott
#30. For those who resist the notion that the mainstream is a genre, we recommend that they browse the shelves of their local bookstore. For if the mainstream is not a genre, then it must necessarily embrace all kinds of writing: romance, adventure, horror, thriller, crime, and, yes, science fiction.
James Patrick Kelly
#31. And I've learned to hit the brakes at these kinds of stop signs rather than t-boning a tanker truck filled with 200 proof mediocrity.
Benjamin Kane Ethridge
#32. I'm defending fiction as a human capacity more than as a popular or dying literary genre.
Ben Lerner
#33. Science fiction used to be a dangerous literature. Now, it is a very commercial genre, and whatever dangers might still lurk within seem to have been safely sanitized for the marketplace. The real crime is that the lobotomy has been self performed. I
Harlan Ellison
#34. Thus far, I've devoted my entire career to publishing genre short fiction, but I now look forward to applying that same level of curation to finding the best new novels and new authors.
John Joseph Adams
#35. There's a thing with genre movies and science fiction movies that number two is the charmed; two seems to be the best. I loved 'Terminator 2.'
Dave Gibbons
#36. Misconceptions about Young Adult fiction aren't new to fans of the genre. From being dismissed as mindless fluff for 'Twilight'-obsessed tweens, to constant warnings that the genre is dying, kerfuffles between the media and readers occur with alarming regularity.
Jennifer Armintrout
#37. I think the type of actor I am, I tend to play strong leading female characters. The shows I've been on happen to be science fiction genre.
Alaina Huffman
#38. What we've done is make the categories of science fiction and fantasy larger, freer, and more inclusive than any other genre of contemporary literature. We have room for everybody, and we are extraordinarily open to genuine experimentation.
Orson Scott Card
#39. Science fiction as a genre has the benefit of being able to act as parable, to set up a story at a remove so you can make a real-world point without people throwing up a wall in front of it.
Joe Haldeman
#40. I wasn't a big science fiction aficionado, there were a few films like 2001 or Blade Runner that were favorites of mine, but since I started this series I have gained more respect for the genre and become more of a fan myself.
Joe Flanigan
#41. All worlds of fiction are alternative realities.
Hal Duncan
#42. Modernist fiction is tied to problems of writers. Self-glorifying. Existential struggle. This has not been a big part of genre writing.
Paul Park
#43. Before novels written by women were relegated to their own 'genre,' I was introduced to Jane Smiley by a dear professor who raised my awareness of what female authors were bringing to the table of contemporary fiction.
Emma McLaughlin
#44. My feeling about fiction, regardless of the genre, is that it is meant to be a representation of life. I want my books to give a whole spectrum of experiences to my readers. Not just fear or terror or revulsion, but excitement, laughter, pain, sorrow, desire, etc.
Richard Laymon
#45. I'm not a great reader of historical fiction; it's not my favourite genre.
Mal Peet
#47. Science fiction is a genre that no everyone is keen on watching.
Zoe Saldana
#48. Techno-shamanism is a sub-genre of science fiction that is not recognized. Ernest Hogan's "Smoking Mirror Blues" is a seminal work in techno-shamanism.
Frank S. Lechuga
#49. The reason fantasy fiction remains such a vital and necessary genre is that it lets us talk about such things in a way realistic fiction cannot.
Stephen King
#50. When I tried to get 'Stargate' made, I took it to every studio in Hollywood and every studio said, 'Sci-fi is dead. It's a dead genre. No one wants to see science fiction anymore.' And I had to go and raise the money independently to make that movie.
Dean Devlin
#51. To me, fantasy has always been the genre of escape, science fiction the genre of ideas. So if you can escape and have a little idea as well, maybe you have some kind of a cross-breed between the two.
Sheri S. Tepper
#52. Everybody always talks about the science fiction genre, in particular, which always makes me think about people in spaceships. I can appreciate that, but that's not really where I think my dramatist aspect lies.
Quentin Tarantino
#53. Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.
Dean Koontz
#54. I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of.
Dashiell Hammett
#55. The built-in form is a window frame. You can use this genre [crime fiction] to go where you want to go, and explore what you want to explore. In some ways it gives you a lot of freedom because you have a framework readers are looking for.
Michael Connelly
#56. I've always loved what I'd term 'dark fiction' writers, everyone from J. G. Ballard to Mervyn Peake and Philip Pullman. I'm not sure it's a genre, but it's what I like best.
Christopher Fowler
#57. As a writer who writes poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, I think it's important to always maintain a firm grasp on genre and ethics.
Kathleen Rooney
#58. Science fiction is the only genre that enables African writers to envision a future from our African perspective.
Nnedi Okorafor
#59. Oddly enough, my favorite genre is not fiction. I'm attracted by primary sources that are relevant to historical questions of interest to me, by famous old books on philosophy or theology that I want to see with my own eyes, by essays on contemporary science, by the literatures of antiquity.
Marilynne Robinson
#60. I would like to do a science fiction film some day. Star Wars seems really to have destroyed the genre, which at one time offered great musical opportunities.
Carter Burwell
#62. The people who are writing online and the people in my genre of creative non-fiction exert a great deal more freedom that journalists are allowed to exert in their day-to-day work.
Lee Gutkind
#63. Writing historical fiction has many common traits with writing sci-fi or fantasy books. The past is another country - a very different world - and historical readers want to see, smell and touch what it was like living there.
Sara Sheridan
#64. The problem lies not with genre but with formula, which consists of seeing genre conventions as restrictions rather than mere guidelines, ends in themselves rather than possibilities.
David Corbett
#65. As a genre-bending blend of police procedural and science fiction, The Silk Code delivers on its promises.
Gerald Jonas
#66. I've never been very attached to genre labels and never set out intentionally to write historic fiction. Besides, what you consider historic depends on how far back your memory extends.
Charles Frazier
#67. I likes me some 'Shit Blows Up' fiction, don't get me wrong.
Hal Duncan
#68. I never paid attention when people said, "That's gotta be poetry. That's gotta be fiction," except when I was in a graduate program, and you had to claim your genre.
Sandra Cisneros
#69. My novels are in the literature section as opposed to the romance section of bookstores because they're not romance novels. If I tried to have them published as romances, they'd be rejected. I write dramatic fiction; a further sub-genre would classify them as love stories.
Nicholas Sparks
#70. I love the science-fiction genre because there's always so many endless possibilities! It's a limitless genre and can be fun playing around with otherworldly ideas.
Laura Mennell
#71. The crime fiction genre offers the writer infinite diversity of theme and treatment.
Stanley Ellin
#72. Science fiction is one of the smartest genres around because you have to have so much forethought.
Amanda Schull
#73. 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.
John Clute
#74. Science fiction is becoming more of a diverse kind of genre.
Anna Torv
#75. I consider science fiction and fantasy my genre. And I've noticed over the years that there doesn't tend to be a lot of lighthearted, comedic stuff.
Gail Carriger
#76. I do teach fiction and non-fiction, and usually I'm interested in works that confuse genre, but I'm very new to teaching creative writing, I don't have an MFA, or a PhD, I tend to approach it just through my own practice.
Kate Zambreno
#77. I think if I did do something in another genre, it would be science fiction; I'm a big sci fi nerd.
Allen Covert
#78. They stared into the distance as though they were being absorbed into an alternate space-time reality. Perhaps they were. But probably they already had been.
Amy Tanner
#79. Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know.
Ted Chiang
#80. I'm a storyteller, and there's some genres I like. I don't think I'm ever going to do science fiction, but I want to do a musical one day. I want to tell stories, I don't really try to get boxed in by a specific genre.
Spike Lee
#81. Most of my influences from outside the commerical strange fiction genre came in with university, discovering James Joyce and Wallace Stevens, Blake and Yeats, Pinter and Borges. And meanwhile within those genres I was discovering Gibson and Shepard, Jeter and Powers, Lovecraft and Peake.
Hal Duncan
#82. Fuck the epistemic modality; this is alethic modality we're talking now, not factuality but possibility.
Hal Duncan
#83. Purdom has created a major body of work. Thoughtful, humane, intelligent, extrapolative, involving, his stories are exactly the sort of thing our genre exists to make possible. If you don't like Tom Purdom, you don't like science fiction. Period.
Michael Swanwick
#84. In any genre you're working in, you can always find a way to tell a particular kind of story. I love fantasy; I love science fiction. I love all kinds of fiction, in fact.
Garth Nix
#85. Funny, they made this new genre called Speculative Fiction, I thought all fiction had always been speculative.
Teri Louise Kelly
#86. I ended up working on "Chicago Hope" and other things, but always with the idea that, eventually, I would want to take what I'd learned in character drama and try to apply that to the genre that I love, which is science fiction and "The Twilight Zone" type mysteries.
Remi Aubuchon
#87. Science fiction has always had a dark side. There has been a touch of the irrational and absurd in the genre from the very beginning.
Douglas Lain
#88. This a work of f(r)iction, where fact and fiction rub up against each other, and nobody wants to know it regardless.
Bob N. Boguslavski
#89. I love my career. It is a career. A difficult one that takes many hours and total dedication to my craft. It is also what I was born to do
tell stories and entertain.
Michelle M. Pillow
#90. There is a lot of evidence to back up the assertion that war fiction takes time. Many all-time classics of the genre, from Erich Maria Remarque's 'All Quiet on the Western Front' to Joseph Heller's 'Catch-22' to Tim O'Brien's 'The Things They Carried,' took over a decade to pen.
Matt Gallagher
#91. Personally, I'd like to see the word genre taken out back and shot, a bullet in the back of its head, if it's going to be so overloaded with meanings it's just gibberish skewed to self-serving doublethink.
Hal Duncan
#92. Horror is one of the few genres - romance and comedy are the other two that come to mind - that's all emotion-driven. It's not a rational genre, like science fiction is. It's irrational by nature. And it is capable of exploring all aspects of human experience.
Stephen R. Bissette
#93. This is the fiction that I'm referring to as rhapsody, this stitching of mimetic representation, oneiric imagery, ludic rules, allegoric morals, satiric critique and diegetic story into complex quiltings of narrative.
Hal Duncan
#94. When it comes down to it, the reason that science fiction endures is that it is, at its core, an optimistic genre. What it says at the end of the day is that there is a tomorrow, we do go on, we don't extinguish ourselves and leave the planet to the cockroaches.
J. Michael Straczynski
#95. Certainly, there is a tendency to lump women who write similar types of books together, and it's not just in crime, is it? Women's fiction is supposedly a whole genre of itself. There's no male equivalent.
Paula Hawkins
#96. It cannot be said often enough that science fiction as a genre is incredibly educational - and I'm speaking the written science fiction, not 'Star Trek.' Science fiction writers tend to fill their books if they're clever with little bits of interesting stuff and real stuff.
Terry Pratchett
#97. I definitely gravitate towards quality genre projects and genre of any kind whether it's science fiction, horror or really anything. I'm just drawn to quality. I don't think 'Darkness Falls' is horror; there isn't any gore by any stretch of the imagination.
Emma Caulfield
#98. No amount of therapy can replace the joy of revenge writing.
Mylo Carbia
#99. The genre of science fiction is a fun house, an amusement park ride, but it's also a problem. The question that's always being indirectly asked is this: 'Just who do we think we are and, further, who do we want to be?'
Douglas Lain
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