Home / Quotes / Quote by John D'Agata

Quote by John D'Agata

“Sometimes what I'm looking for is the thing that will help renew people's interest in a writer that they may have written off as not their kind of writer.”

Quote by John D'Agata

Author

John D'Agata is an American essayist known for his distinctive writing style and profound insights into the reality of the world. His works often explore the edges and limits of human existence, as well as the boundaries between language and truth. more

You May Also Like

“They [Oneida people] didn't want to fix problems one at a time. If someone invited them to a feminist convention, their answer would have been, 'In the new world women will have total equality, so lets spend our energy creating that whole new world.' And to their credit, the women at Oneida probably had far greater practical equality than what any of the women gathered at Seneca Falls experienced in their lifetimes.”

People Ifs World Want Has Beens Whole Problem Fall Energy Answers Greater Creating Lifetime Feminist Credit Practicals New World Conventions Invited Total Equality

Author:Christine Jennings

“I'm not worried about what part of their life they needed to massage in order to achieve something that I get to experience as transcendent. Because that's the point of literature, I think: to connect.”

Thinking Order Literature Achieve Needed Worried Transcendent Massage

Author:John D'Agata

“Utopian fiction is really boring. I had to read a lot of it, and it's not that much fun. But they're fascinating to me as historical documents. Cabet [Icaria's founder and author of the utopian novel, Travels in Icaria], is writing in the 1830s, and his idea of the perfect society reveals a lot about his time. But his book is uniquely bad.”

Writing Book Ideas Fun Perfect Fiction Novel Historical Boring Fascinating Founders Documents Utopian Perfect Society

Author:Christine Jennings

“The fatal flaw of most utopian visions is that they're fundamentally static, and that's not a comfortable place for humans to live. Fourier was very good at imagining a utopia that is constantly changing and very busy, but a vision of paradise that would have been most tantalizing to an underfed overworked factory worker in 1840 doesn't have much appeal in fiction because it's not a story.”

Humans Has Beens Stories Fiction Vision Comfortable Workers Busy Very Good Appeals Paradise Flaws Factories Utopia Static Utopian Factory Workers Tantalizing Fatal Flaws Fourier

Author:Christine Jennings

“If there's a poster boy for the fact that all essays are written through personae, it's Crèvecoeur.”

Ifs Facts Boys Written Essays Posters

Author:John D'Agata

“I worry that I may have overstated the impact of Civil War on the utopians. By the time the Civil War comes, most of the communities were quite separated from the wider American society. Their rhetoric is still about transforming the world, but they're not having that much traffic with their neighbors.”

World May Stills War Community Worry Impact Neighbor Civil War Rhetoric Traffic Transforming American Society Transforming The World

Author:Christine Jennings

“The thing that had fueled these utopian communities was a literal belief, and not just a general sense of optimism, that the earth was about to become a paradise. That idea cannot hold water after the war.”

Ideas War Earth Belief Water Community Optimism Paradise Literal Utopian

Author:Christine Jennings

“The Enlightenment faith that things are getting a little bit better each decade becomes difficult to support. People recognized that there had just been a war that was worse than the war of 1812, and worse than the Revolution; things were clearly not getting better and better.”

People Littles War Bits Difficult Support Revolution Little Bit Enlightenment Decades Get Better War Of 1812

Author:Christine Jennings

“So there's that change of general consciousness, and then there's this boom after the war, this expansion into the West. It was like the 1950s. The American economy was pumping at top speed. The kinds of people who would move into these communities and organize their lives around a utopian dream now had dreams about the West.”

People Kind War Dream Moving Community Consciousness Economy West Speed Organize Expansion Utopian American Economy

Author:Christine Jennings

“The thought was, 'We're going to go to California, where the soil is black and ten feet deep, and there are no rocks, and there's gold in the hills.' The West becomes the surface onto which people project their fantasies, where once the future had been the place they projected their fantasies. So it's not just the war that ends the utopian communities, but what follows.”

People War Ends Black Community Fantasy Feet Rocks Ten Projects Gold West Surface Hills California Soil Utopian

Author:Christine Jennings