“If all stories are fiction, fiction can be true -- not in detail or fact, but in some transformed version of feeling. If there is a memory of paradise, paradise can exist, in some other place or country dimensionally reminiscent of our own. The sad stories live there too, but in that country, we know what they mean and why they happened. We make our way back from them, finding the way through a bountiful wilderness we begin to understand. Years are nothing: Story conquers all distance.” IfsKnowsWayYearsMeanCountryFactsStoriesFeelingsMemoriesFictionHappenedFindingsDistanceDetailsVersionsBeing TrueConquerParadiseWildernessTransformedSad Story Author:Jayne Anne Phillips
“A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.” WritingTryingReasonRealityLiteratureFictionDistanceJournalismJournalistNovelistsPettyFake People Book:Mornings in the dark: the Graham Greene film reader Source: Mornings in the dark: the Graham Greene film reader
“When writers are self-conscious about themselves as writers they often keep a great distance from their characters, sounding as if they were writing encyclopedia entries instead of stories. Their hesitancy about physical and psychological intimacy can be a barrier to vital fiction. Conversely, a narration that makes readers hear the characters' heavy breathing and smell their emotional anguish diminishes distance. Readers feel so close to the characters that, for those magical moments, they become those characters.” IfsFeelsWritingSelfMomentsCharacterStoriesFictionEmotionalReaderConsciousDistanceHeavySmellPsychologicalIntimacyBreathingBarriersAnguishDiminishSelf ConsciousEntryEncyclopediaNarrationMagical Moments Author:Jerome Stern
“Scientists are embarrassed by science fiction; they want to distance themselves as much as possible. ... I think there's nothing to be ashamed of [and that] we should take science fiction seriously.” ThinkingWantShouldFictionScientistScience FictionDistanceAshamedEmbarrassed Author:Michio Kaku
“Life's tallest order is to keep the feelings up, to make two dollars' worth of euphoria go the distance. And life can't do that. So fiction does.” DoeTwoFeelingsOrderFictionDistanceDollarsEuphoria Author:Stanley Elkin
“Fiction is often a much-needed step back that gives you the distance to see things more clearly; it's very often better at explaining why events happened as opposed to just what happened.” GivingFictionStepsHappenedEventsNeededDistanceExplaining Author:Kathleen Rooney
“There is really no fiction or non-fiction; there is only narrative. One mode of perception has no greater claim on the truth than the other; that the distance has perhaps to do with distance - narrative distance - from the characters; it has to do with the kind of voice that is talking, but it certainly hasn't to do with the common distribution between fact and imagination.” KindCharacterFactsVoiceImaginationCommonFictionTalkingGreaterPerceptionClaimsDistanceNarrativeDistributionNon Fiction Author:E. L. Doctorow