I think the first duty of all art, including fiction of any kind, is to entertain. That is to say, to hold interest. No matter how worthy the message of something , if it’s dull, you’re just not communicating. Poul Anderson
A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader. Vladimir Nabokov
I write fiction and I’m told it’s autobiography, I write autobiography and I’m told it’s fiction, so since I’m so dim and they’re so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn’t. Philip Roth
Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning. Dorothy Allison
Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality. Jean Baudrillard
Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible. Virginia Woolf
Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures. Jessamyn West
Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us. Paul Theroux
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith. Gore Vidal
If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There’s a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you’re dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they’re the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not. Anthony Burgess
Good fiction reveals feeling, refines events, locates importance and, though its methods are as mysterious as they are varied, intensifies the experience of living our own lives. Vincent Canby
It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have. Flannery O’Connor
‘The proper stuff of fiction’ does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss. Virginia Woolf