If a historian were to relate truthfully all the crimes, weaknesses, and disorders of mankind, his readers would take his work for satire rather than for history.
—Pierre Bayle
I have spent a good many years… being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.
—Stephen King
The good thing about writing fiction is that you can get back at people. I've gotten back at lawyers, prosecutors, judges, law professors, and politicians. I just line 'em up and shoot 'em.
—John Grisham
The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it.
—Frank Herbert
Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.
—Jessamyn West