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Quote by Zia Haider Rahman

“News has a way of distancing us from events, even as it informs us about them. News articles almost always present both the event and the responses at the same time - how is President Barack Obama or Congress responding to the events? I think this reflects a deep need we have to feel that things are under control and that events are subject to our influence.”

Author

Zia Haider Rahman

Zia Haider Rahman is a novelist known for his deep exploration of history, politics, and personal identity in his works. His writing has received critical acclaim and praise from readers. more

“Another effect of news articles is that the events, however frightening, can thus be consigned to the box of things that happen to other people, not us, and that we are doing things to bring them under control. This is the diet we're fed all the time, so we acculturate to it. And news must, in turn, follow the form to which we - our bodies - are accustomed: describe the event, incite the fear, then say how it's being addressed, how the herd's alpha males are dealing with it.”

People Frightening Alpha Male Dealing With It

Author:Zia Haider Rahman

“The difference does not lie in the things that news does that novels do not do, but in the things that novels do that news cannot do. In other words, this basic technique of news - just one among many - is something a novel can use, but a novel can deploy a multitude of other techniques also. Novels are not bound by the rules of reportage. Far from it. They're predicated on delivering experience.”

Lying Novel

Author:Zia Haider Rahman

“By delivering experience, novels can alter the stance we adopt toward news - not much, I'm sure, but they can make it a little more difficult for us to consign "other people" to our tidy boxes. Widening our imaginative life might - it's not hard to imagine - also develop our ability to contemplate counterfactuals and our capacity to speculate about how things might differ from how they're being represented.”

People Difficult Ability Novel Imagine Contemplating Imaginative

Author:Zia Haider Rahman

“There are a variety of ways in which a wedge is driven between the reality of the world outside, the motion of atoms, and our conception of what is there. Some of it has to do with what we're told, some of it to do with sensibilities that might be described as cultural, some of it to do with habit, some to do with heuristics we, as Homo sapiens, invoke because we cannot do otherwise - to name just a few of the impediments.”

World Reality Habit Driven Variety Sensibility

Author:Zia Haider Rahman