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Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten...more

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enter the world of things as they are

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There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.

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Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and life doesn't.

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Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie tha...more

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Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit,...more

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The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and yo...more

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I had forgotten what fiction was to me as a boy, forgotten what it was like in the library: fiction was an escape from the intolerable, a doorway into...more

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Once upon a time,’ is code for ‘I’m lying to you.’ We experience stories as lies and truth at the same time. We learn to empathize with real people vi...more

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Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or...more

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The black bird cocked its head to one side, and then said, in a voice like stones being struck, 'You shadow man.''I'm Shadow,' said Shadow. The bird h...more

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One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a ba...more

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He was having more fun than a barrelful of monkeys.**Several years earlier Spider had actually been tremendously disappointed by a barrelful of monkey...more

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You know I love you,' said the other mother flatly.'You have a very funny way of showing it,' said Coraline.

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The magic and the danger of fiction is this: it allows us to see through other eyes. It takes us to places we have never been, allows us to care about...more