: Re: Quote at the beginning of a chapter, is it advisable for fiction novels? I have read a few non-fiction works (mostly scientific) where there is a quote at the beginning of each new chapter.

@Sent2472441

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A quote (called an epigraph) is added to the start of a book or a chapter when it adds an insight to the story. What kind of insight is up to you: it might be an additional understanding of events on a meta level, it can be foreshadowing, it can be extra information, etc. It is never a random quote found in google, since that adds no insight. The epigraph is as integral a part of the story you're writing as anything else. If it adds nothing, it shouldn't be there at all.

For example, Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls starts with a quotation from John Donne:

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of they friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

This epigraph should inform the reader's understanding of Hemingway's novel, convey that it is bigger than the story of one guy named Robert Jordan.

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