Reading fiction quotes:

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Too afraid of plagiarising someone, so I stopped reading fiction in 1981. -- Robert Rankin
Writing and reading fiction is, I think, a human effort to make sense of the world. -- Robin Hobb
Movies feel like work, and reading fiction feels like work, whereas reading nonfiction feels like pleasure. -- Peter Morgan
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
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
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
Writing fiction, like reading fiction, is a practice in empathy. -- Jennifer Haigh
I'm terrible at reading fiction. I don't have the attention span - it's awful. -- Charlie Brooker
I love reading fiction about people who are connecting intellectually. I find that exhilarating. -- Lily King
Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors--we hope--of your life come from reading fiction. -- Orson Scott Card
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
I always wanted to be a writer! But I wanted to do other things, too - be a psychologist, a librarian, et cetera. Now Ive decided that reading fiction that features characters who are in those professions will do. -- Helen Oyeyemi
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
No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, don't confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader. -- Cynthia Ozick
Dad always said that he had enough trouble sorting the fiction out of so-called facts, without reading fiction. He always said that science was already too muddled without trying to make it jibe with religion. He said those things, but he also said that science itself could be a religion, that a broad mind was always in danger of becoming narrow. -- Jim Thompson
I do enjoy reading some science fiction. -- Colin Farrell
A lot of the cosmologists and astrophysicists clearly had been reading science fiction. -- Frederik Pohl
The strength of fiction is not in reading about yourself, but in reading about other people. -- Tom Rachman
I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time. -- Octavia Butler
The older I've got the less I find myself going back and re-reading or really reading new fiction or poetry. -- Reynolds Price
I go to readings by fiction writers like Alice Walker, and I'm envious of the level of attention they generate. -- Derrick Bell
People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries. -- Denise Mina
I don't actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I'm most often inspired while reading - both fiction and nonfiction. -- James Rollins
Historical fiction is actually good preparation for reading SF. Both the historical novelist and the science fiction writer are writing about worlds unlike our own. -- Pamela Sargent
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
Contrary to all those times you've heard a writer confess at a reading that he writes fiction because he is a pathological liar, fiction writing is all about telling the truth. -- Paul Harding
I love reading all kinds of books. I usually have about ten books going at any one time - books about the past, the present, novels, non-fiction, poetry, mythology, religion, etc. Reading is my favorite thing to do. -- Mary Pope Osborne
We had a few non-fiction books at home, but my dad was of the opinion that fiction was a complete and utter waste of time because it wasn't real - so what was the point of reading it? -- Malorie Blackman
I grew up poor in crappy situations... various crappy situations. What kept me sane was reading and music. I had so many different literary tastes growing up, be it fiction like Stephen King or Piers Anthony or non-fiction like reading Hunter S. Thompson essays or reading the Beats. I was a huge fan of the Beat movement. -- Corey Taylor
For me, writing historical fiction is all about finding a balance between reading, traveling, looking, imagining, and dreaming. -- Anthony Doerr
I don't remember learning to read, but the first thing I remember reading is a science fiction novel. -- Vonda N. McIntyre
Reading my way all the way through Sherlock Holmes gave me a lifelong love for crime and detective fiction. -- Stanley Bing
I grew up reading crime fiction and, especially in the '80s, women were just there to be saved or screwed. -- Karin Slaughter
When I was very young I was reading a lot of Latin American fiction, which later would be called "boom fiction." -- Sandra Cisneros
Millions of students now, in all the schools of America, are reading science fiction and especially, thank God, 'The Martian Chronicles.' -- Ray Bradbury
Those who relish the study of character may profit by the reading of good works of fiction, the product of well-established authors. -- Richard Whately
I spend most of my time reading non-fiction of all sorts. Then poetry. Then fiction to blurb. Then fiction I want to read. -- Jim Shepard
Generally, I read nonfiction. Theres very little fiction that I enjoy enough to spend my time reading. I am generally a nonfiction guy. -- Peter Morgan
Generally, I read nonfiction. There's very little fiction that I enjoy enough to spend my time reading. I am generally a nonfiction guy. -- Peter Morgan
A lot of what the 'Culture' is about is a reaction to all the science fiction I was reading in my very early teens. -- Iain Banks
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
Reading my personal accountI believe you feel-you-will know that the Holocaust was neither a legend nor Hollywood fiction but a lesson for the future! -- Livia Bitton-Jackson
I have been reading the Old Testament, a most bloodthirsty and perilous book for the young. Jehovah is beyond doubt the worst character in fiction. -- Edwin Arlington Robinson
Reading and discovering fiction has taught me how to empathise, understand falling in love and all those complex relationships that people have to deal with. -- Daniel Tammet
Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. -- Ann Patchett
Life is not a piece of tragic fiction in which, at the end of the reading, we all get up and go out for drinks. -- Marianne Williamson
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
I can't claim to be disenchanted "with the current state of fiction" because I read so little of it. My reading is mostly drawn to history. -- Cynthia Ozick
I've always loved sister stories in fiction, from the time I was little, reading about Beezus and Ramona. I've always wanted to write a sister story. -- Emily Giffin
I'm always reading several books at the same time, depending on how deeply engrossed in it I am, if it's fiction and if it captures me. -- Andie MacDowell
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
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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
The art of fiction is one of constant seduction. You must persuade the reader on page 1 to start reading - on page 50, or page 150 and yes, on page 850. -- Marge Piercy
Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won't keep reading your work. -- Haruki Murakami
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
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
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
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
I think anything that opens my mind and triggers my imagination I'm reading. I like to read science fiction and imagine the character. Anything that keeps my imagination flowing. -- Nicolas Cage

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