Stories and writers - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!

- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures inWonderland (1865)

I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.

- Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes (1914)

I wondered at the ancients who had never realized the utter absurdity of their literature and poetry. The enormous, magnificent power of the literary word was completely wasted. It's simply ridiculous - everyone wrote anything he pleased.

- Yevgeny Zamiatin, We (1924), translated by Mirra Ginsburg (1972)

I would not look to any fiction writer, living or dead, for guidance on any subject, and therefore, if he does not entertain, he is a total loss.

- Edgar Rice Burroughs, ''Entertainment Is Fiction's Purpose'' (1930)

Things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.

- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1937)

Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which ''Escape'' is now so often used: a tone for which the uses of the word outside literary criticism give no warrant at all. In what the misusers are fond of calling Real Life, Escape is evidently as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic. In real life it is difficult to blame it, unless it fails; in criticism it would seem to be the worse the better it succeeds. Evidently we are faced by a misuse of words, and also by a confusion of thought.Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?

- J. R. R. Tolkien, ''On Fairy-Stories'' (1947)

There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing.

- William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1959)

I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, ''The game's afoot!'' I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin. I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be - instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road (1963)

''Your story is impossible, ridiculous, fantastic, mad, and obviously the ravings of a disordered mind,'' Hermann said. ''And I believe every word of it.''

- Keith Laumer, The Other Side of Time (1965)

The role of the writer today has totally changed - he is now merely one of a huge army of people filling the environment with fictions of every kind. To survive, he must become far more analytic, approaching his subject matter like a scientist or engineer. If he is to produce fiction at all, he must outimagine everyone else, scream louder, whisper more quietly. For the first time in the history of narrative fiction, it will require more than talent to become a writer.

- J. G. Ballard, ''Fictions of Every Kind'' (1971)

Most things grow old and perish, as the centuries go on and on. Very few are the precious things that remain precious, or the tales that are still told.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan (1971)

Escape literature, he told me, should be an escape for the writer as well as the reader.

- Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle (1976)

Who can possibly be as deeply inside a story as the person whowrites it?

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Number of the Beast (1980)

It was a wonderful tale he told. It had enchanted castles sitting on mountains of glass, moist caverns beneath the sea, fleets of starships and shining riders astride horses that flew the galaxy. There were evil alien creatures, and others with much good in them. There were drugged potions. Scaled beasts roared out of hyperspace to devour planets. Amid all the turmoil strode the Prince and Princess. They got into frightful jams and helped each other out of them.

- John Varley, ''The Pusher'' (1981)

If you have to be a character in a book, why not be the hero?

- John Kessel, ''Another Orphan'' (1982)

Part of it has to do with his recent insight that he is merely hanging on, that the ultimate outcome of ultimate struggle for any writer in America not hopelessly self-deluded is to hang on.

- Barry N. Malzberg, ''Corridors'' (1982)

No one enjoys writing. [. . .] There is noway to stop.Writers go on writing long after it becomes financially unnecessary . . . because it hurts less to write than it does not to write.

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Cat WhoWalks throughWalls (1985)

There's a biosoft dossier in there. For when you're older. It doesn't tell the whole story. Remember that. Nothing ever does . . .

- William Gibson, Count Zero (1986)

''What is literature, Rabo,'' he said, ''but an insider's newsletter about affairs relating to molecules, of no importance to anything in the Universe but a few molecules who have the disease called 'thought.' ''

- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Bluebeard (1987)

People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.

- Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad (1991)

So I, poor instrument - poor contrivance of whatever being's making - I shall write. It is what I do. It is what I am. It is all to which I ought aspire. It is my poor shadow of the true creation. And perhaps it is a shadow forged of steel, in the end.

- Esther M. Friesner, Yesterday We Saw Mermaids (1992)

If you present me with a hardback edition of my work, I shall autograph it, ''Arthur Clarke.'' If you present a paperback, I will sign it, ''A. C. Squiggle.''

- Arthur C. Clarke, cited by S. James Blackman, ''TheWorld Keeps Up with Arthur Clarke'' (1999)

What's the end of a story? When you begin telling it.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Telling (2000)

The best stories come from deep within a writer's soul.

- Michael A. Burstein, ''Paying It Forward'' (2003)