Top 100 Quotes About Reading Fiction
#1. Movies feel like work, and reading fiction feels like work, whereas reading nonfiction feels like pleasure.
Peter Morgan
#2. Writing fiction, like reading fiction, is a practice in empathy.
Jennifer Haigh
#3. I have two pairs of reading glasses. One pair is for reading fiction, the other for non-fiction. I've read the Bible twice wearing each pair, and it's the same.
Steven Wright
#4. I spend my life writing fiction, so reading fiction isn't much of an escape. That's not always true, but I don't read much contemporary fiction.
Alan Furst
#5. In the act of reading, especially reading fiction, where a world is being created, all kinds of matters of belief come into play.
Alice McDermott
#6. I grew up not reading fiction; I watched movies and read comic books, and one of the ways I taught myself to think about narrative was through film.
Kevin Wilson
#7. Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors
we hope
of your life come from reading fiction.
Orson Scott Card
#8. His chief interest was in reading fiction, then trying to analyze what he had read, fitting it into a larger pattern.
Stephen King
#9. I definitely want to act and I want to sing. If those two fall through, I want to become a writer, probably, like a songwriter for other people, or a novel writer. I write a lot, and I read a lot. I like reading fiction.
Cassie Steele
#10. And I am pretty sure that's the point of reading fiction
so someone else can say in a way you never would have something you recognize immediately.
Curtis Sittenfeld
#11. Reading fiction as you commute to a job you don't like will make you feel somewhat more fulfilled; being in the right job will make you feel incredible.
Laura Vanderkam
#12. Writing to her from America, her best friend remarked, 'I've stopped reading fiction, I just read about you.
Catherine Bailey
#13. Reading the several thousand pages of Christopher Isherwood's complete journals is an instructive corrective to the prissiness of reading fiction. Isherwood had faults that we'd say were unforgiveable in a novel (he was careful to distance himself from these in his autobiographical fiction).
Edmund White
#14. Reading fiction - excerpts from National Book Award finalists, winners of the Pen/O. Henry Prize for short stories, or even Amazon bestsellers - has been shown to enhance theory of mind:
Margaret Heffernan
#15. Writing and reading fiction is, I think, a human effort to make sense of the world.
Robin Hobb
#16. I thought it was amazing that I could get a diploma just for reading fiction. It was like being able to major in eating chocolate. (on majoring in literature)
Sarah Addison Allen
#17. As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!
William James
#18. I always wanted to be a writer! But I wanted to do other things, too - be a psychologist, a librarian, et cetera. Now I've decided that reading fiction that features characters who are in those professions will do.
Helen Oyeyemi
#19. The novel, as a genre, was once considered a diversion every bit as frivolous as Facebook, but over the years, we've managed to convince ourselves that reading fiction is as important to our mental digestion as fresh fruits and vegetables are to the processes that take place a little further down.
Lynn Coady
#20. Just as pilots gain practice with flight simulators, people might acquire social experience by reading fiction.
Raymond A. Mar
#21. That is the joy of reading fiction: when all is said and done, the novel belongs to the reader and his or her imagination.
Alice Hoffman
#22. But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.
George R R Martin
#23. Too afraid of plagiarising someone, so I stopped reading fiction in 1981.
Robert Rankin
#24. Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel empathy for people we've never met, living lives we couldn't possibly experience for ourselves, because the book puts us inside the character's skin.
Ann Patchett
#25. I love reading fiction about people who are connecting intellectually. I find that exhilarating.
Lily King
#26. What I read: while I'm writing, I tend to go off reading fiction for relaxation - especially the challenging stuff. It's too much like the day job.
Charles Stross
#27. When her mind was discomposed ... a book was the opiate that lulled it to repose.
Ann Radcliffe
#28. I don't divide my reading into demographic categories, any more than I'd divide my friends into groups along ethnic or sexual lines. The thing I look for most is a sense of literary rawness - bareback fiction, if you will.
Christopher Fowler
#29. I tend to listen to music more than I read. I need to get into reading a bit more. The stuff I tend to read is usually non-fiction books more than fiction, but I've been trying to power my way through Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment,' and I do enjoy it.
Isaac Hempstead-Wright
#30. The unification of worlds is an author's priority, as one of them surely resides forbidden to the public.
P.A. Wunderlich
#31. I've always felt sad for people who don't read fiction; they only get to live one life.
Jack Tyler
#32. But I'm not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative. Maybe that's one of the reasons we enjoy it.
Anthony Horowitz
#33. The man she wanted existed only in the romantic novels she was reading. She had met him. But he would never meet her.
Mary Papas
#34. I took on a year of reading books for a reason. Because words are witness to life: they record what has happened, and they make it all real. Words create the stories that become history and become unforgettable. Even fiction portrays truth: good fiction is truth.
Nina Sankovitch
#35. Speech recognition is utterly crap for writing fiction. If you try reading a novel aloud you'll soon figure out why - written prose style is utterly unlike the spoken word.
Charles Stross
#37. Reading yourself as a fiction as well as a fact is the only way to keep the narrative open
the only way to stop the story running away under its own momentum, often towards an ending no one wants.
Jeanette Winterson
#38. The best of fiction, as we know, of course, doesn't tell the truth; it tales the truth.
Criss Jami
#39. I spent the period reading the first novel assigned for English. And wow. If I hadn't realized I was in France yet, I do now. Because Like Water for Chocolate has sex in it. LOTS of sex.
Stephanie Perkins
#40. The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue ...
Bruno Bettelheim
#41. If you ever meet someone who thinks they are so special, the best thing to do is smile. You don't have to say anything. Be friendly and then go do
your best. That will make you special, too!
Jeff Hutchins
#42. When I'm reading for my own pleasure, I read things other than history or archival material. I read a lot of fiction. I'm very fond of mysteries.
David McCullough
#43. For some reason, I spent my early thirties reading as much postwar Hungarian fiction as I could get my hands on.
Garth Risk Hallberg
#44. 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
#46. Paranormal fiction offers authors - and readers - the chance to answer the question, 'What if?' All the different ways that question can be answered make for extremely entertaining reading.
Jeaniene Frost
#47. Reading literary fiction stimulates cognition beyond the brain functions related to reading, say, magazine articles, interviews, or most online nonfiction reporting.
Susan Reynolds
#48. The stories in Get In Trouble confirm once again that Kelly Link is a modern virtuoso of the form-playful and subversive required reading for anyone who loves short fiction.
Jeff VanderMeer
#49. I got to spend all of my time every day at work reading and editing papers about cutting-edge technical research and getting paid for it. Then I'd go home at night and turn what I learned into science fiction stories.
Kevin J. Anderson
#50. As a child, I read science fiction, but from the very beginnings of my reading for pleasure, I read a lot of non-fictional history, particularly historical biography.
Norman Spinrad
#51. Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.
Louis L'Amour
#52. When I'm not writing, I read loads of fiction, but I've been writing quite constantly lately so I've been reading a lot of nonfiction - philosophy, religion, science, history, social or cultural studies.
Irvine Welsh
#53. I know these are going to sound like school reading-list suggestions, but if you like dystopian fiction, you should check out some of the originals: 'Anthem,' by Ayn Rand; '1984,' by George Orwell; or 'Brave New World,' by Aldous Huxley.
Sara Shepard
#54. Do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.
Azar Nafisi
#55. He had been inspired to start a career in the porn industry after reading the incredible tale of a Japanese man who avenged the death of his sister by going down on her best friend for seven days and seven nights.
Mark Jackman
#56. Secret Saturdays ought to be required reading at middle schools everywhere. Maldonado gives us both voice and heart. His young characters navigate a challenging world with endearing earnestness, lively style, and a heartening desire for true friendship and dignity.
E.R. Frank
#57. The effect of reading literary non-fiction that matters most to me is when the coin drops, and this happens in the company of the great, mercuric, encyclopedic minds: Empson, Kenneth Burke, Northrop Frye.
Paul Fry
#58. Fiction is a house with many stately mansions, but also one in which it is wise, at least sometimes, to swing from the chandeliers.
Michael Dirda
#59. All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.
Steve Almond
#60. People who don't read fiction are scared of what's inside their own heads.
Carla H. Krueger
#61. I started reading contemporary fiction in college or right after college. It wasn't as if I was steeped in experimental minimalism when I was twelve or something. I was reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond.
Leni Zumas
#62. I finally decided one day, reading science fiction magazines of the time, I could do at least as well as some of these people are doing. So I finally made a serious effort.
Fred Saberhagen
#63. I didn't want to tell the story of myself, but someone I called myself. If you read yourself as fiction, it's rather more liberating than reading yourself as fact.
Jeanette Winterson
#64. Often, when I am able to check out a book, I read it a dozen times before returning it, desperate to remain lost in the magic of someone else's story.
Amy Engel
#65. Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.
Virginia Woolf
#66. Perhaps this is why one reads fiction to begin with - to live a more interesting reality than one's daily life.
Steven Rigolosi
#67. Reading is fuel for the brain. Writing is fuel for the spirit ...
Megan S. Johnston
#68. I found out after reading quite a lot of it that it is not rated very high. He has a very descriptive way of writing but also lengthy. May not want to finish!!!!! This was his 1sr and only try ast Historical Fiction!
Wilkie Collins
#69. And in a way I have always thought that words are alive a little, for they can whisper sweet nothings and roar dragon flame with equal efficiency.
Lyndsay Faye
#70. Wishing you the best adventures in reading and in life!
Sass Cadeaux
#71. As with a love affair, the battered heart needs time to recover from a good work of fiction.
Michael Dirda
#72. Low and behold what comes of reading too many romance novels.
Kellyn Roth
#73. I like reading a lot. Jeffrey Archer and Robert Ludlum are my favourite authors. I love making realistic cinema, so I read non-fiction more.
Madhur Bhandarkar
#74. In 1970, at the age of 14, I entered a short story contest offering a grand prize of one dollar. I won. This was my first foray into writing fiction. I loved reading and thought that it shouldn't be so hard to write a story.
David Bergen
#75. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children ... do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is the gateway drug to other books you may prefer.
Neil Gaiman
#77. I think it's no coincidence that people who are good at writing far-out fiction are also good at meta-fiction. Think of all the best Phillip K. Dick stories, where you experience a sort of dislocation, and suddenly what you think you've been reading is, in fact, something else entirely.
Paul Park
#78. 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
#79. My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart.
Gabrielle Zevin
#80. I stoped reading science fiction once I saw that the UFO was real. It became science fact that just hasn't been proven yet.
Mike Bird
#81. You can't write any form of fiction unless you enjoy reading it. You must be sincere in your approach. It's no good despising the form. So many people think they could earn some money from writing something for which they have no affection. It won't work. The first thing you have to have is belief.
Charlotte Bingham
#82. Books do pretend ... but squeezed in between is even more that is true - without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see?
Matthew Pearl
#83. Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.
Jeanette Winterson
#84. Meredith immersed herself in the novels. For some reason, fiction hit on the meaning of life so much more concisely than real life itself did.
Elin Hilderbrand
#85. Books can be viewed as food for the mind
Stop reading and your brain can become anemic
Read junk and your thinking can become malnourished
But handle your diet with books well and your life long learning never stops
Jonathan Frakes
#86. The letter of application ... should be a masterpiece of fiction, papering over all the cracks. Get it properly typed on decent writing paper. Never let it run over the page, people get bored with reading.
Jilly Cooper
#87. TV and film were always governing passions of mine, and that first wave of great HBO shows in the early years of the millennium was feeding my desire for fiction more than the books I was reading.
Nic Pizzolatto
#88. I should like to write about what happens when fictive people encounter and are embellished by real people.
Jean Giono
#89. Amie frowned. 'That's what I can't figure out. I mean everyone wants their happy ending, right? No one cares about reading actual literature anymore anyway. All they want is vampires and supernatural mumbo-jumbo. It's sick, really.
Jennifer Silverwood
#90. He had discovered, in the course of his reading, two schools of fiction. One treated of man as a god, ignoring his earthly origin; the other treated of man as a clod, ignoring his heavensent dreams and divine possibilities.
Jack London
#91. We liked to believe there is an alternate world, a better world, populated entirely by characters created by the yearnings of humanity
governing and inspiring themselves with all the lucidity wit which we rendered them.
Miguel Syjuco
#92. Good fiction often gives us characters in extremity, which ironically gives us a clearer mirror in which to see ourselves.
Sarah Van Arsdale
#93. I wondered, reading about the college discussions, whether, one day, people would put a trigger warning on my fiction. I wondered whether or not they would be justified in doing it. And then I decided to do it first.
Neil Gaiman
#94. I didn't read comic books, growing up. I was more of a science fiction/fantasy novel guy. I loved reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' 'Tarzan' and that kind of stuff.
Jesse L. Martin
#95. Stephen Hawking said he spent most of his first couple of years at Cambridge reading science fiction (and I believe that, because his grades weren't all that great).
Frederik Pohl
#96. I like to read fiction, and I particularly enjoy reading young adult fiction. But I also read children's books, adult books, current authors, and classics, but I like fiction the most.
James Howe
#97. Only through fiction can we think about the unthinkable...
Stephen King
#98. I write for those who desire, not publication at any cost, but publication one can be proud of
serious, honest fiction, the kind of novel that readers will find they enjoy reading more than once, the kind of fiction likely to survive.
John Gardner
#99. I believe we do well to fall asleep each night with books. We enter the library of our dreams in good company then.
Robert Stephen Parry
#100. Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.
Paul Theroux
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