135 Fiction And Nonfiction Quotes

Following is our list of fiction and nonfiction quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about nonfiction.

Famous Fiction And Nonfiction Quotes

Don't make a big distinction between fiction and non-fiction. These are arbitrary distinctions. — Farley Mowat

Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it. — John Hersey

Fiction is the truth inside the lie. — Stephen King

I used to distinguish between my fiction and nonfiction in terms of superiority or inferiority. — Peter Matthiessen

The problem with fiction, it has to be plausible. That's not true with non-fiction. — Tom Wolfe

There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative. — E. L. Doctorow

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures. — Jessamyn West

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense. — Tom Clancy

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

Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over. — Neil Gaiman

Fiction has a unique role in conveying Truth. In fact, only fiction that is Truth with a capital T is worthwhile. — Jerry B. Jenkins

Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything. — Ivana Trump

Fact is often stranger than fiction because most writers of fiction try to make their stories plausible. — Richard Posner

Fiction is a branch of neurology: the scenarios of nerve and blood vessels are the written mythologies of memory and desire. — J. G. Ballard

Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive. — Karen Russell

Short Fiction And Nonfiction Quotes

• The best fiction is far more true than any journalism. — William Faulkner
• It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense. — Mark Twain
• Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life. — Simone Weil
• There's a fine line between fiction and non-fiction and I think I snorted it somewhere in 1979 — Kinky Friedman
• Stories make you think and dream; books make you want to ask questions. — Michael Morpurgo

Fiction And Nonfiction Image Quotes

Fiction And Nonfiction Quotes

Beyond that, I seem to be compelled to write science fiction, rather than fantasy or mysteries or some other genre more likely to climb onto bestseller lists even though I enjoy reading a wide variety of literature, both fiction and nonfiction. — Joan D. Vinge

To be creative means to connect. It's to abolish the gap between the body, the mind and the soul, between science and art, between fiction and nonfiction. — Nawal El Saadawi

I'm working on a nonfiction book on Nepal and a novel about diasporas. — Louise Brown

Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning. — Arundhati Roy

I come from a little island with the Caribbean Sea on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. I come from, really, nowhere, and for me, the fiction and the nonfiction, creative or otherwise, all come from the same place. — Jamaica Kincaid

When I'm writing fiction I'm thinking, God, this is so hard - I have to make all this stuff up! I wish I were writing a nonfiction book where all the facts are laid out and I don't have to be so much at sea. — Douglas Preston

There is always a certain leap of faith that editors have made with their nonfiction writers. If the trust is broken, things can get very embarrassing for the writers and the publisher. — A. Scott Berg

I am consumed, or I have been consumed, with these issues of motherhood and the way we act out societal expectations and roles. So both my nonfiction and my fiction have been pretty much exclusively about that. — Ayelet Waldman

In fiction, when you paint yourself into a corner, you can write a pair of suction cups onto the bottoms of your shoes and walk up the wall and out the skylight and see the sun breaking through the clouds. In nonfiction, you don't have that luxury. — Tom Robbins

Usually I read several books at a time - old books, new books, fiction, nonfiction, verse, anything - and when the bedside heap of a dozen volumes or so has dwindled to two or three, which generally happens by the end of one week, I accumulate another pile. — Vladimir Nabokov

Nonfiction Quotes

I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it's such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction. — Judith Krantz

I still believe nonfiction is the most important literature to come out of the second half of the 20th century. — Tom Wolfe

It's the technique, I think, of writing a novel that is difficult for a nonfiction writer. — E. O. Wilson

In this time of the Internet and nonfiction, to be on an actual bookshelf in an actual bookstore is exciting in itself. — Chris Abani

People respect nonfiction but they read novels. — E. O. Wilson

Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. — Joan Didion

Let it be fact, one feels, or let it be fiction; the imagination will not serve under two masters simultaneously. — Virginia Woolf

People like nonfiction presented to them in a certain way, so that they don't have to think about whether it's true or not. They like it to have that imprimatur of respectability, of genuineness. — Errol Morris

Creative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and often more accessible. — Lee Gutkind

One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material. — William Zinsser

Non-fiction Quotes

The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have survived even in part. — Richard Stallman

I did one sci-fi movie. I did 'Gattaca.' I liked 'Gattaca' because that was always the kind of science fiction I really dug, the non-action oriented sci-fi. — Ethan Hawke

Expand the definition of 'reading' to include non-fiction, humor, graphic novels, magazines, action adventure, and, yes, even websites. It's the pleasure of reading that counts; the focus will naturally broaden. A boy won't read shark books forever. — Jon Scieszka

Without books we're a very uneducated society. Think of the places books have taken us, the people we've been introduced to (fiction or non-fiction) and how books have allowed us to broaden our vocabulary. — Tom Robinson

I do, however, feel reasonably strongly the sense that the job of a piece of argumentative scholarly non-fiction is not the same as the job of a piece of fiction. — China Mieville

When you play a non-fiction character it is more responsibility than when you are playing a fiction character because that person lived, and you do want to pay respect to that. — Bryan Cranston

[I like to read] spiritual books, non-fiction, fiction, I have my moods. — MC Lyte

I think fiction can help us find everything. You know, I think that in fiction you can say things and in a way be truer than you can be in real life and truer than you can be in non-fiction. There's an accuracy to fiction that people don't really talk about - an emotional accuracy. — A.M. Homes

I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work. — Alain de Botton

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

Non Fiction Quotes

Perhaps this is the purpose of all art, all writing, on the murders, fiction and non-fiction: Simply to participate. — Alan Moore

Read everything. Read fiction and non-fiction, read hot best sellers and the classics you never got around to in college. — Jennifer Weiner

For some reason, I seem to be bothered whenever I see acts of injustice and assaults on people's civil liberties. I imagine what I write in the future will follow in that vein. Whether it's fiction or non-fiction. — Iris Chang

I'm writing another novel and I know what I'm going to do after, which may be something more like this again, maybe some strange mixture of fiction and non-fiction. — Penelope Lively

I read very widely, both non-fiction and fiction, so I don't think there's a single writer who influences me. — Peter Benchley

I cannot say how strongly I object to people using other people's writing as research. Research is non-fiction, especially for horror, fantasy, science fiction. Do not take your research from other people's fiction. Just don't. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Because I'm such a creative person, and I've always got my nose in a book, I suppose it was only a matter of time before non-fiction turned into fiction again. But I never consciously set out to become a writer and I never thought I'd be doing the things I'm doing today. — Paul Kane

I was looking to do something non-fiction because I had done a strip, 'My Mom Was a Schizophrenic.' I really enjoyed the process of doing that strip, despite its subject matter. To do it I'd had to do a lot of research and reading and I figured I'd like to do that again. — Chester Brown

You can tell within a sentence if something is fiction or non-fiction. You can tell in the artifice of the language or the care of the construction the difference between art and life. — Ethan Canin

To my mind, the prose in a non-fiction work that's going to endure has to be of the same quality as the prose in a work of fiction that endures. — Robert Caro

Writing Nonfiction Quotes

He would write it for the reason he felt that all great literature, fiction and nonfiction, was written: truth comes out, in the end it always comes out. He would write it because he felt he had to. — Stephen King

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up. — Joan Didion

I like to get paid for doing basic research, so it's pleasant to write some nonfiction about it. — Bruce Sterling

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

I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction. — Irvine Welsh

Good writing is good writing no matter what genre you're writing in, and I believe that there are only a handful of fundamental craft tools that are essential for any genre-including nonfiction. — Georgia Heard

I really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994. — Jonathan Franzen

Every time I write a nonfiction book I get sued. — Joseph Wambaugh

My entire career, in fiction or nonfiction, I have reported and written about people who are not like me. — Tom Wolfe

If you write nonfiction, a historical account of what really happened, first of all, it's always White men who do that and you don't have the voices that are really interesting to me, of the people who are not sheltered by the big umbrella of the establishment. — Isabel Allende

Fiction And Reality Quotes

A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. — Donna J. Haraway

The boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion — Donna J. Haraway

The fact is that one of the earliest lessons I learned in business was that balance sheets and income statements are fiction, cash flow is reality. — Chris Chocola

A poet's mission is to make others confound fiction and reality in order to render them, for an hour, mysteriously happy. — Isak Dinesen

In order to dream, you need to have a springboard which is the facts... It gives it that touch of reality, and I think that's quite important... truth with fiction. — Janet Leigh

The fiction is like the art, in making stuff out of nothing, in creating a hyper-reality to have an experience. If it's strong enough, and your spell is strong enough, then you become, like, ultra-magnetic and then everything comes to you. — Watkin Tudor Jones

I'm an unashamed realist, and actually, I try to make whatever the script is the reality of that situation, even though it's fictional. — Wolfgang Petersen

Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction. — Yann Martel

Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality. — Jean Baudrillard

As the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction. But only when the reality has not been subsumed by foamy legends and fantasies that radiate outward from the actual event. — Brock Yates

Fiction Novels Quotes

My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky. — Alan Moore

Oh, I’m nerdy about science fiction and fantasy and graphic novels and reading, and I’m nerdy about board games. My favorite board game is a board game I’m working on right now. It’s a game of Napoleonic era naval warfare, and it’s going to be fun. — Billy Campbell

It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly. — C. J. Cherryh

Babylon 5 is probably the biggest, most ambitious television science fiction series ever made. It's one big novel told over five years with 110 different stories told within it. — Bill Mumy

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying. — Anton Chekhov

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with. — William Faulkner

We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something. — Orson Scott Card

If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

Good fiction must be entertaining- but what makes fiction special- and True- is that the realness of a novel allows it to carry a larger message. — Jerry B. Jenkins

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within. — Gustave Flaubert

People Writing About Fiction And Nonfiction

Name	Quotes	Likes
Farley Mowat quotes on education, war and life	23	570
John Hersey	25	244
Stephen King quotes on writing, horror and love	1306	6633
Peter Matthiessen quotes on education, nature and life	43	229
Tom Wolfe quotes on home, death	69	613
E. L. Doctorow quotes on education, life and love	92	219

More Fiction And Nonfiction Quotes

My platform has been to reach reluctant readers. And one of the best ways I found to motivate them is to connect them with reading that interests them, to expand the definition of reading to include humor, science fiction/fantasy, nonfiction, graphic novels, wordless books, audio books and comic books. — Jon Scieszka

I give this book 5 Stars and highly recommend it to all fiction, nonfiction, and poetry writers, aspiring writers, bloggers or journalists. — Sunny

Maybe I have a one-track mind, but the best writers and thinkers are focusing on nonfiction these days; this is the genre where a writer can make a mark and change an aspect of the world - much more so than in fiction. — Lee Gutkind

I enjoy doing the research of nonfiction; that gives me some pleasure, being a detective again. — Joseph Wambaugh

I like nonfiction books about people with wretched lives. — David Sedaris

Redheaded Peckerwood, which unerringly walks the fine line between fiction and nonfiction, is a disturbingly beautiful narrative about unfathomable violence and its place on the land — Luc Sante

In nonfiction, you have that limitation, that constraint, of telling the truth. — Peter Matthiessen

But with nonfiction, the task is very straightforward: Do the research, tell the story — Laura Hillenbrand

Nonfiction speaks to the head. Fiction speaks to the heart. Poetry speaks to the soul. It's the essence of beauty. The essence of pain. It pleases the eye and the ear. — Ellen Hopkins

The difference between fiction and nonfiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable. — Mark Twain

Inexperienced fiction and creative nonfiction writers are often told to show, not tell - to write scenes, dramatize, cut exposition, cut summary - but it can be misguided advice. Good prose almost always requires both showing and telling, scenes and summary, the two basic components of creative prose — Laurie Alberts

With fiction, and also with nonfiction that you can take your time doing, you have a much better chance of reaching across the divide and connecting with somebody who is opposed to you on some things. They're opposed to you on one axis, which is politics, but if you go over the axis called puppies, you might find some common ground. — George Saunders

The funny thing is that in Bosnia there are no words that are equivalent to fiction and nonfiction. From the storytelling point of view, the difference is artificial. — Aleksandar Hemon

I enjoy the writings of all of these authors and they have been very inspirational for me. But I think that it is important as writers of metaphysical, New Age, occult fiction and nonfiction to not take ourselves too seriously. — Frederick Lenz

I don't actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I'm most often inspired while reading - both fiction and nonfiction. I subscribe to National Geographic, Scientific American, Discover, and a slew of other magazines. And it is while reading articles for pleasure and interest that an interesting 'What if?' will pop into my head. — James Rollins

I read the same amount of nonfiction and fiction. — Anne Lamott

Fiction stymies me with its possibility. I can't see the bottom and I freeze, cling to the side, or just choke. In nonfiction, particularly that which takes personal narrative for its primary topic, I have a finite space and a finite amount of material. I can't fabricate material, I can only shape and burrow into it. — Melissa Febos

Prose gets divided up into fiction and nonfiction and short fiction and long fiction and autobiographical nonfiction and so on. Poetry can do any of those things except with the added definition of intensified formal pressure. — Robert Hass

Nonfiction is easy and fiction is hard. — Ann Patchett

Back in the day, a lot of our instructors in nonfiction were actually fiction scholars. So they would bring in stories as models for the essay. And in some ways that's a good idea, because we can all learn from other genres. But I think it also made me realize that I literally didn't have an essay model, and that if I wanted one I would have to find it. — John D'Agata

I'm drawn to fiction that hints at nonfiction, that blurs or seems to blur the boundaries between invention and autobiography. — Garth Greenwell

Fiction is more dangerous than nonfiction because it can seduce better. I think we all know this, know that deeper truths can be approached in fiction than in fact. There are risks for the reader, because after reading certain books you find you have changed irreversibly. There are risks for writers: in China, now, and Ethiopia and other countries right now, writers face real persecution. — Chris Abani

With the historical fictions, I was already doing so much research, and so much of the stories was anchored by historical truth that the move to nonfiction didn't feel all that dramatic - just another half-step to the right. — Debra Dean

If a reader believes that everything in nonfiction or history is just objectively true, I don't really know what to tell them, except that at least in fiction, the choice of what perspective and bias to tell a given story from - which is always a deliberate choice - is foregrounded and clear. — Kathleen Rooney

In early drafts, one of the trickiest things for me to do was to realize that the techniques and devices that make readable and compelling nonfiction are not always identical to the ones that make good fiction. — Kathleen Rooney

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

Though I consider The Chronology of Water to be an anti-memoir for very precise reasons, it is an art form, and thus as open to "critique" as any other art form. Memoir has a form, formal strategies, issues of composition and craft, style, structure, all the elements of fiction or nonfiction or painting or music or what have you. — Lidia Yuknavitch

The truth is that every writer, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, is trying to write something truly original and that's what I think I'm doing. — Lisa Scottoline

I never wanted to be an editor. I never wanted to be a boss. I just wanted to write, and it didn't make any difference whether it was fiction or nonfiction or short stories or whatever. I just - that's what I was destined to do. — Frank DeFord

I read nonfiction almost exclusively - both for research and also for pleasure. When I read fiction, it's almost always in the thriller genre, and it needs to rivet me in the opening few chapters. — Dan Brown

I write fiction longhand. That's not so much about rejecting technology as being unable to write fiction on a computer for some reason. I don't think I would write it on a typewriter either. I write in a very blind gut instinctive way. It just doesn't feel right. There's a physical connection. And then in nonfiction that's not the case at all. I can't even imagine writing nonfiction by hand. — Jennifer Egan

In Conclusion

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