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The phantasmagorical world of novels and of opium.—MATTHEW ARNOLD, Literature and Dogma
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True fiction hath a higher end, and scope
Wider than fact; it is nature's possible,
Contrasted with life's actual mean.—PHILIP J. BAILEY, Festus
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In the march up to the heights of fame there comes a spot close to the summit in which a man reads "nothing but detective stories." It is the Antaean touch which distinguishes all Olympians.—HEYWOOD BROUN, G. K. C.
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When we risk no contradiction,
It prompts the tongue to deal in fiction.—JOHN GAY, The Elephant & the Bookseller
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Novels (receipts to make a whore).—MATTHEW GREEN, The Spleen
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Fictions meant to please should be close to the real.—HORACE, Ars Poetica
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A little attention to the nature of the human mind evinces that the entertainments of fiction are useful as well as pleasant.—JEFFERSON
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Where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief.—SAMUEL JOHNSON
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Character in decay is the theme of the great bulk of superior fiction.—H. L. MENCKEN, Prejudices
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The first thing will be to have a censorship of the writers of fiction, to accept the good and reject the bad.—PLATO, The Republic
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Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.—CHARLES READE, Recipe for Writing Novels
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The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature to those of us who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without hurting anyone and without humiliating himself too much.—ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
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If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.—SHAKESPEARE, Twelfth Night
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The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works
of fiction.—STEVENSON
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Fiction carries a greater amount of truth in solution than the volume which purports to be all true.—THACKERAY, The English Humourists
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The only real people are the people who never existed.—OSCAR WILDE, The Decay of Lying
