Meta Quotes

“Of course we live in dreams and by dreams, and even in a disciplined spiritual life, in some ways especially there, it is hard to distinguish dream from reality. In ordinary human affairs humble common sense comes to one's aid. For most people common sense is moral sense. But you seem to have deliberately excluded this modest source of light. Ask yourself, what really happened between whom all those years ago? You've made it into a story, and stories are false.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“You might even ask me to apply my 'theory' to myself and explain what damage I had suffered a long way back and what its consequences might be: for instance, how it might affect my reliability and truthfulness. I'm not sure I could answer this, to be honest.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“I had done magic.

Sometimes, when people in stories encounter the paranormal, they react with horror as the fabric of reality shreds and they are faced with the dawning recognition that everything they once believed was a lie. As I stared down at my phone, I had that exact feeling, except the opposite: not horror but a giddy, mounting joy. This was what all those books had promised. I knew it, I thought. I knew the world was more interesting than it was pretending to be.”
― Kristen Roupenian, You Know You Want This: Cat Person and Other Stories

“Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be 'true in a way'. I trust this passing reflection will not lead anyone to doubt the truth of any part of this story! When I come to describe my life with Clement Makin credulity will be strained but will I hope not fail!”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“That is no doubt how the story ought to end, with the seals and the stars, explanation, resignation, reconciliation, everything picked up into some radiant bland ambiguous higher significance, in calm of mind, all passion spent. However life, unlike art, has an irritating way of bumping and limping on, undoing conversions, casting doubt on solutions, and generally illustrating the impossibility of living happily or virtuously ever after; so I thought I might continue the tale a little longer in the form once again of a diary, though I suppose that, if this is a book, it will have to end, arbitrarily enough no doubt, in quite a short while.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“Easy to see the solution when you're not in the story, isn't it.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“It might be most dramatically effective to begin the tale at the moment when Arnold Baffin rang me up and said, "Bradley, could you come round here please, I think I have just killed my wife.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Then the front doorbell (already too long delayed by my rambling narrative) rang.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“I am not a very nice character. You must get to know me some time.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“I gave her as much as I had, but it's like the difference between a movie and a book: A book lets you choose how much of the blood you want to see. A book gives you the permission to see the story as you want, as your mind directs. You interpret. Your Alexander Portnoy doesn't look like mine because we all have our unique view. When you finish a movie you leave the theater with your friend and talk about the movie right away. When you finish a book you think. Love grew up on movies and I have just read her a book. I give her time to digest.”
― Caroline Kepnes, Hidden Bodies

“I struggled with a nebulous work which seemed now a nouvelle, now a vast novel, wherein a hero not unlike myself pursued, amid ghostly incidents, a series of reflections about life and art.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“However one must ask not just, is it amusing, is it exciting, but is it a work of art?”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“They do think the world is some kind of science-fiction novel, then. Do you realize how fervently most people will believe in the promises of technology, even when those promises fly in the face of common sense?”
― Dexter Palmer, The Dream of Perpetual Motion

“I will break your heart over a fucking library card.”
― Patrick Rothfuss

“È un grande privilegio avere un obiettivo preciso. Molti attraversano la vita senza nemmeno percepir ne il senso. Avanzano bene o male arrancando, vivono da una coincidenza all'altra, un bacio qui, una lacrima là, qualche carezza, solitudine, tradimenti, ma non hanno mai la minima idea di un perché, di uno scopo, di una meta. Chi vive una vita senza obiettivi potrà sicuramente conoscere momenti di felicità, ma sono solo frutto del caso, sono fortuna, non un raccolto (...).
"La tristezza degli angeli”
― Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Harmur englanna

“I stared at the list, as though willing the murderer's name to appear in red letters before my eyes. I felt I was so close to discovering something, if only I could find the right link, some bit of information that would point in the right direction. At least, that was how it worked in the mystery novels.”
― Ashley Weaver, Murder at the Brightwell

“In the novels, it always seemed best to keep the suspect talking. Inevitably, help would arrive. I really held out no hope for such an opportune occurrence, but it seemed the best course of action would be to distract her until I could determine what to do.”
― Ashley Weaver, Murder at the Brightwell

“This quote is often falsely attributed to Mark Twain.”
― Randall Munroe

“Quando ci si avvicina alla meta il viaggio, per una qualche ragione che ha a che fare coi meandri del pensiero, dell'attesa e della sopportazione, diventa sempre più faticoso”
― Pace Federico

“Earnshaw is quite a famous name, thanks to Miss Brontë . I did not realise there were Earnshaws in this country."

Mrs. Earnshaw gave a sharp nod. "Aye. And Heathcliffs and Eyres, as well. Proper little thieves, those Brontë girls.”
― Deanna Raybourn, Silent on the Moor

“If someone wrote a book about her, no one would believe it.”
― Kevin Kwan, Rich People Problems

“There are indeed many places where I could start. I might start with Rachel's tears, or Priscilla's. There is much shedding of tears in this story. In a complex explanation any order may seem arbitrary. Where after all does anything begin? That three of the four starting points I have mentioned were causally independent of each other suggests speculations, doubtless of the most irrational kind, upon the mystery of human fate.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“The book is quite serious and quite funny. (Most novels are.)”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“That friend of hers has got to go, though. You're lucky you got stuck with that Dexter guy instead of her.'

'Yeah, but that Dexter couldn't shut his piehole either,' Marlon says. 'I mean, Christ. Artists and writers—let them kill each other off in cage matches; let God sort 'em out.”
― Dexter Palmer, The Dream of Perpetual Motion

“Pulaski had never been one for the overwrought plot; any entanglement he could imagine between these two lines of evidence was willful to the point of insanity.”
― Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire

“Why perform a meta-analysis? what is a meta-analysis? Meta-analysis is an analytical approach designed to summarize the consequences of multiple research.”
― Madhukar Shivajirao Dama

“One must take care that one's life does not begin to resemble the plot of a novel.”
― Gregory Blake Smith, The Maze at Windermere

“Like something out of a boring old novel.”
― Sarra Manning, The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp

“I almost forgot to mention another fox I know of—a very wicked fox indeed. But you are tired of hearing about foxes now, so I won't go on.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“If I describe him to you in terms of hair, eye color, shape of face, the effect will be all wrong, because he was the living, breathing incarnation of my deepest desires, not yours. You must imagine your own naked man, and I will tell you only this: he was larger than I would have expected, more fully embodied, and that is only half a dirty joke. There was no prettiness about him, and nothing effeminate. Nothing angelic, either, so if that's what you had started to picture, start again.”
― Kristen Roupenian, You Know You Want This: Cat Person and Other Stories