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Fiction Quotes

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Fiction Quotes

“The genius is not in how much Stanley Kubrick does in “2001: A Space Odyssey,'' but in how little. This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn't include a single shot simply to keep our attention. He reduces each scene to its essence, and leaves it on screen long enough for us to contemplate it, to inhabit it in our imaginations. Alone among science-fiction movies, “2001'' is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe.”

Source: 33 Movies to Restore Your Faith in Humanity: Ebert's Essentials

“Most crime fiction plots are not ambitious enough for me. I want something really labyrinthine with clues and puzzles that will reward careful attention.”

Want Enough Attention Fiction Crime Rewards Careful Plot Ambitious Puzzles Clue Want Something Crime Fiction

Author:Sophie Hannah

“But the sensibility of the writer, whether fiction or poetry, comes from paying attention. I tell my students that writing doesn't begin when you sit down to write. It's a way of being in the world, and the essence of it is paying attention.”

World Way Writing Attention Fiction Students Essence Pay Attention Sensibility

Author:Julia Alvarez

“The most striking fault in work by young or beginning novelists, submitted for criticism, is irrelevance--due either to infatuation or indecision. To direct such an author's attention to the imperative of relevance is certainly the most useful--and possibly the only--help that can be given.”

Helping Young Given Attention Fiction Direct Criticism Faults Dues Novelists Infatuation Imperatives Relevance Indecision Irrelevance

Book:Pictures and conversations

Source: Pictures and conversations

“You can lose a reader in a blink of an eye. If a person is an engineer or chemist or an anthropologist or whatever, you spoil the whole book for that person if there's obviously ignorance here. What's wrong with so much science fiction is that the science is so lousy that it isn't worth paying attention to.”

Ifs Persons Book Whole Eye Loses Attention Fiction Ignorance Reader Science Fiction Pay Attention Engineers Spoil Blink Chemist Anthropologists Blink Of An Eye

Author:Robert Caro

“If my setting is new to a reader, or the concerns of the novel are new, I hope they will learn something about the world. I would like to say that they can trust that what they do learn in the novel will be accurate, because I pay a lot of attention to facts. I do a lot of research to make sure that I'm not giving them, you know, blue moons of Jupiter. It's not science fiction.”

Ifs Knows World Giving Facts Pay Attention Fiction Novel Reader Moon Research Concern Blue Science Fiction Setting Settings Accurate Jupiter Blue Moon

Author:Barbara Kingsolver

“The beauty of prose fiction that I see is simply that in order to create something you need only pay attention to personal exigency.”

Needs Order Pay Attention Fiction Pay Attention Prose

Author:James Kelman

“I want my fiction to feel real most of the time, so it makes sense to pay attention to life and to how people work.”

People Want Feels Real Pay Attention Fiction Pay Attention Make Sense

Author:Nick Earls

“There are writers who draw immediate attention to the fact that it's fiction. And I like some of that, but it doesn't really have the power.”

Facts Attention Fiction Draws

Author:Ethan Canin

“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.”

World Literature Attention Fiction Disease Sight Poetic Cleaners Slaughterhouses Disease And Death

Book:Writings, 1902-1910

Source: Writings, 1902-1910

“Science fiction fans are the smartest fans in television. They just are. They're just so smart, and they know so much detail and information. They're a part of the story and they inform your character, as well. We all listen to the fans, and we love their feedback and the attention they give us.”

Knows Giving Wells Character Stories Attention Fiction Fans Information Television Smart Science Fiction Details Feedback

Author:Azita Ghanizada

“More people pay attention to fiction and to narrative than pay attention to journalism. That's quite sad. More people pay attention to television than to prose. That's equally sad, if not more so.”

People Ifs Pay Attention Fiction Television Journalism Pay Attention Narrative Prose

Author:David Simon

“For me, the term "literary fiction" means there's always attention paid to language, and linguistic experimentation, sophistication.”

Mean Language Term Attention Fiction Paid Experimentation Sophistication

Author:Karen Russell

“When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry. And the reason for that is because the fiction writers seemed to need to learn how to pay greater attention to language itself, to the way that language works.”

Way Needs Writing Reason Language Pay Attention Fiction Creative Greater Taught Poet Program University Creative Writing Workshops Fiction Writing Fiction Writers Houston

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I never paid attention when people said, "That's gotta be poetry. That's gotta be fiction," except when I was in a graduate program, and you had to claim your genre.”

People Said Attention Fiction Program Claims Paid Genre Graduates

Author:Sandra Cisneros

“It's hard to read real fiction. It takes time. It takes a sustained attention.”

Real Hard Attention Fiction Take Time It Takes Time

Author:Frederick Busch

“I'm terrible at reading fiction. I don't have the attention span - it's awful.”

Reading Attention Fiction Terrible Awful Attention Span Reading Fiction

Author:Charlie Brooker

“Some trans people thought that in claiming that gender is performative that I was saying that it is all a fiction, and that a person's felt sense of gender was therefore "unreal." That was never my intention. I sought to expand our sense of what gender realities could be. But I think I needed to pay more attention to what people feel, how the primary experience of the body is registered, and the quite urgent and legitimate demand to have those aspects of sex recognized and supported.”

People Thinking Feels Persons Body Reality Sex Felt Pay Attention Fiction Needed Demand Aspect Intention Gender Primaries Urgent Unreal Trans

Author:Judith Butler

“I think a more complex idea of fiction - and the human self's relationship with the world - emerges when we abandon this philistine equation between literature and liberalism and human goodness, and pay some attention to the darker, ambiguous, and often muddled energies and motivations that shape a work of art. If we do this, we can appreciate a writer like Céline or Gottfried Benn without worrying whether they conform to existing notions of political incorrectness.”