Fiction Quotes - Page 39

• I was clasified as a 'Science Fiction' writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Science Fiction, Fiction Writers

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• Imagine a crime series in which, every week, there is a white suspect and a black suspect. And every week, lo and behold, the black one turns out to have done it. Unpardonable, of course. And my point is that you could not defend it by saying: "But it's only fiction, only entertainment."

  Richard Dawkins

  White, Black, Entertainment

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• Science Fiction is the jazz of literature.

  David Brin

  Literature, Jazz, Science Fiction

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• A great novelist excels on the small scale and the large, the individual leaf and root as well as the forest; good fiction convinces us that the imaginary is real by selecting exactly the right detail and rendering it perfectly.

  Laura Miller

  Real, Convince Us, Roots

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• But there are no institutions on earth which enable each separate person to have a hand in the exercise of Power, for Power is command, and everyone cannot command. Sovereignty of the people is, therefore, nothing but a fiction, and one which must in the long run prove destructive of individual liberties.

  Bertrand de Jouvenel

  Running, Exercise, Hands

  Bertrand de Jouvenel (1949). “On Power: Its Nature and the History of Its Growth”

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• Perhaps the rediscovery of our humanity, and the potential of the human spirit which we have read about in legends of older civilizations, or in accounts of solitary mystics, or in tales of science fiction writers - perhaps this will constitute the true revolution of the future. The new frontier lies not beyond the planets but within each one of us.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Lying, Civilization, Humanity

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• I really am just trying to tell stories. But stories are often grounded in larger events and themes. They don't have to be - there's a big literature of trailer-park, kitchen-table fiction that's just about goings-on in the lives of ordinary people - but my own tastes run toward stories that in addition to being good stories are set against a backdrop that is interesting to read and learn about.

  Neal Stephenson

  Running, People, Interesting

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Well, it's my voice, so it's more accessible that way, and there are also all sorts of things like plot and timelines that are already known entities, so for me, it's very different from writing fiction.

  Alice Sebold

  Writing, Voice, Different

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Just as art brings you to another place, so does religion - and to ask questions of factuality tends to reduce both. If you say you were inspired by a novel, that implies that your book is a work of fiction.

  Yann Martel

  Art, Book, Doe

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Life is an interpretation of a series of facts, and that interpretation is really what life is about. So the division between non-fiction and fiction has a certain logic, but it's a very limited one. And by and large, it isn't helpful.

  Yann Martel

  Facts, Division, Helpful

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I meet a number of people as a writer of fiction who say "Oh, I don't read much fiction," as if the history of the United States, just as an example, isn't an exercise in storytelling and myth-making.

  Yann Martel

  Exercise, Numbers, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Characters more or less present themselves to me. I don't know their origins. I think if I did, if I seemed to myself to fabricate them, I could not induce suspension of disbelief in myself in the way writing fiction requires.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Writing, Character, Thinking

  "Marilynne Robinson: A Good Inheritance". Interview with Michele Filgate, www.barnesandnoble.com. October 21, 2014.

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• I'm a storyteller, and there's some genres I like. I don't think I'm ever going to do science fiction, but I want to do a musical one day. I want to tell stories, I don't really try to get boxed in by a specific genre.

  Spike Lee

  Thinking, Musical, Trying

  "Interview: Investigating ‘Da Sweet Blood of Jesus’ w/ Spike Lee + Lead Actors Zaraah Abrahams and Stephen Tyrone Williams". Interview with Zeba Blay, February 11, 2015.

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• ...fiction is made out of the writer's experience, his whole life from infancy on, everything he's thought and done and seen and read and dreamed. But experience isn't something you go and get - it's a gift, and the only prerequisite for receiving it is that you be open to it. A closed soul can have the most immense adventures, go through a civil war or a trip to the moon, and have nothing to show for all that "experience"; whereas the open soul can do wonders with nothing.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  War, Adventure, Moon

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• On the threshold of the moral world we meet the idea of Freedom, 'one of the weightiest concepts man has ever formed,' once a dogma, in the course of time a hypothesis, now in the eyes of many a fiction, yet we cannot do without it, even although we may be firmly convinced that our acts are determined by laws that cannot be broken.

  Havelock Ellis

  Eye, Men, Law

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• Among its many other obligations, fiction always has to be believable. Life does not have to suffer such constraint, and much of what takes place is believable only because it happens.

  John McGahern

  Suffering, Doe, Obligation

  John McGahern (2009). “Creatures of the Earth: New and Selected Stories”, p.3, Faber & Faber

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• We divert our attention from disease and death as much as we can; the slaughterhouses are huddled out of sight and never mentioned, so that the world we recognize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far handsomer, cleaner and better than the world that really is.

  William James

  Sight, Disease And Death, Attention

  William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.88, Library of America

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• Fiction must compete with first-rate reporting. If you cannot write a story that is equal to a factual account of battle in the streets or demonstrations, then you can't write a story.

  John Cheever

  Writing, Battle, Stories

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• One of the things [fiction] does is lead you to recognize what you did not know before.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Doe, Knows

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• I am an old-fashioned storyteller. I try to make people laugh and cry. A fiction writer's duty is to entertain. If you can sneak in something profound or symbolic, so much the better.

  W. P. Kinsella

  Sneak In, People, Profound

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• Our place is somewhere between being and nonbeing - between two fictions.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Two

  "Anathemas and Admirations". Book by Emil Cioran, 1987.

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• If we are too friendly to nice, decent bishops, we run the risk of buying into the fiction that there's something virtuous about believing things because of faith rather than because of evidence. We run the risk of betraying scientific enlightenment.

  Richard Dawkins

  Running, Nice, Believe

  "Scientists divided over alliance with religion" by Alok Jha, www.theguardian.com. May 29, 2007.

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• As a fan of science fiction and as a kid who loves monsters, science fiction movies and this, that and the other, there's no real way to make a career out of that. Especially when I grew up.

  Kevin Grevioux

  Real, Kids, Careers

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• I have friends who are capable of writing a very rough draft and then going back and embroidering - they're sort of the cathedral builders of fiction. I never really know what I'm doing, and all my pleasure's on the level of the line. It's a weird way to move forward. It's kind of like a way to caterpillar your way through these great woods. The best ones, whatever I feel like I'm writing about, some other secret thing will begin to come into focus.

  Karen Russell

  Moving, Writing, Focus

  "Karen Russell’s Fantastical World". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. February 7, 2013.

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• I see myself as a storyteller, I don't mind if the story is fact or fiction, if it's a good story I'd like to tell it.

  Leanne Pooley

  Mind, Stories, Facts

  "TIFF Women Directors: Meet Leanne Pooley". Interview with Melissa Silverstein, September 6, 2013.

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