"Fiction is like a spider's web, attached..." - Quote by Virginia Woolf
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; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.
More by Virginia Woolf
“The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder.”
“I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual”
“The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mould of the body and mind entire.”
More on Fiction
“Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.”
“Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures?”
“While I find inspiration in real life, the actual stories are, thankfully, works of fiction - which, given the considerable turmoil in my character's lives, is probably a good thing!”
More on Life
“Life is perpetually creative because it contains in itself that surplus which ever overflows the boundaries of the immediate time and space, restlessly pursuing its adventure of expression in the varied forms of self-realization.”
“Life's greatest rewards are reserved for those who demonstrate a never-ending commitment to act until they achieve.”
“Toil and risk are the price of glory, but it is a lovely thing to live with courage and die leaving an everlasting fame.”