Fiction 

1. Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
   Hannah Arendt 1906–75 American political philosopher: Men in Dark Times (1968)
2. ‘Oh! it is only a novel!…only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda:’ or, in short, only some work in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.
   Jane Austen 1775–1817 English novelist: Northanger Abbey (1818) ch. 5
3. 3 or 4 families in a country village is the very thing to work on.
   Jane Austen 1775–1817 English novelist: letter to Anna Austen, 9 September 1814
4. There should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.
   Lord Byron 1788–1824 English poet: letter to John Murray from Venice, 2 April 1817
5. Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
   G. K. Chesterton 1874–1936 English essayist, novelist, and poet: The Defendant (1901) ‘A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls’
6. A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
   G. K. Chesterton 1874–1936 English essayist, novelist, and poet: Heretics (1905) ch. 15
7. A good storyteller is a person who has a good memory and hopes other people haven't.
   Irvin S. Cobb 1876–1944 American writer: attributed in Herbert V. Prochnow Speaker's Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms (1955)
8. We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
   Joan Didion 1934–  American writer: The White Album (1979)
9. The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.
   William Empson 1906–84 English poet and literary critic: Milton's God (1981)
10. Yes—oh dear yes—the novel tells a story.
    E. M. Forster 1879–1970 English novelist: Aspects of the Novel (1927) ch. 2
11. Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
    W. S. Gilbert 1836–1911 English writer of comic and satirical verse: The Mikado (1885) act 2
12. The Story is just the spoiled child of art.
    Henry James 1843–1916 American novelist: The Ambassadors (1909 ed.) preface
13. What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?
    Henry James 1843–1916 American novelist: Partial Portraits (1888) ‘The Art of Fiction’
14. A beginning, a muddle, and an end.
    on the ‘classic formula’ for a novel
    Philip Larkin 1922–85 English poet: in New Fiction no. 15, January 1978; see Aristotle
15. If you try to nail anything down in the novel, either it kills the novel, or the novel gets up and walks away with the nail.
    D. H. Lawrence 1885–1930 English novelist and poet: Phoenix (1936) ‘Morality and the Novel’
16. There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.
    Doris Lessing 1919–2013 English writer: Under My Skin (1994) ch. 14
17. Anything whatsoever may become the subject of a novel, provided only that it happens in this mundane life and not in some fairyland beyond our human ken.
    Murasaki Shikibu c.978–c.1031 Japanese writer and courtier: The Tale of Genji
18. ‘Thou shalt not’ might reach the head, but it takes ‘Once upon a time’ to reach the heart.
    Philip Pullman 1946–  English writer: in Independent 18 July 1996
19. Surely to tell these tall tales and others like them would be to speed the myth, the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.
    Zadie Smith 1975–  English novelist: White Teeth (2000) ch. 20
20. A novel is a mirror which passes over a highway. Sometimes it reflects to your eyes the blue of the skies, at others the churned-up mud of the road.
    Stendhal 1783–1842 French novelist: Le Rouge et le noir (1830) bk. 2, ch. 19
21. Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets.
    Andy Warhol 1927–87 American artist: Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) (1975)
22. The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.
    Oscar Wilde 1854–1900 Irish dramatist and poet: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) act 2; see Stoppard