“Human lives seldom conform to the conventions of fiction. Chekhov says that it is in the beginnings and endings of stories that we are most tempted to lie. I know what he means, and I agree.” KnowsHumansMeanStoriesLyingFictionAgreeHuman LifeConventionsConformTemptedChekhovBeginnings And Endings Book:Crossing to Safety Source: Crossing to Safety
“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.” HumansSpiritLyingHumanityFictionPlanetsRevolutionCivilizationAccountsScience FictionTalesLegendsSolitaryHuman SpiritFrontiersFiction WritersNew FrontiersRediscovery Author:Pierre Trudeau
“I'm defending fiction as a human capacity more than as a popular or dying literary genre.” HumansFictionDyingCapacityGenreHuman CapacityLiterary Genre Author:Ben Lerner
“Fiction doesn't appeal to me because it can describe physical appearances exhaustively or because it can offer access to the inner depths of an array of human characters - neither that kind of "realism" of bodily surfaces nor of individual psychologies seems particularly realistic to me.” HumansKindCharacterSeemsIndividualFictionPsychologyOffersDepthAppearanceSurfaceAccessAppealsRealisticRealismPhysical Appearance Author:Ben Lerner
“As a novelist, your impulse is toward multiplicity: multiple voices, multiple perceptions, multiple nuances, the ambiguity in human communication. Fiction really is the ultimate home for that sense of ambiguity.” HumansHomeVoiceFictionCommunicationPerceptionUltimateImpulseNovelistsMultipleAmbiguityNuanceMultiplicity Author:Pankaj Mishra
“"Hard" science fiction probes alternative possible futures by means of reasoned extrapolations in much the same way that good historical fiction reconstructs the probable past. Even far-out fantasy can present a significant test of human values exposed to a new environment. Deriving its most cogent ideas from the tension between permanence and change, science fiction combines the diversions of novelty with its pertinent kind of realism.” WayHumansKindMeanIdeasHardPastValuesFictionFantasyEnvironmentTestsScience FictionHistoricalSignificantAlternativesTensionHistorical FictionExposedRealismNoveltyPermanenceDiversionHuman ValuesPertinentNew Environment Author:Jack Williamson
“The human mind shows an urge to capture into fixed forms through unreal assumptions, that is, fictions, that which is chaotic, always in flux, and incomprehensible. Serving this urge, the child quite generally uses a scheme in order to act and to find his way. We proceed much the same when we divide the earth by meridians and parallels, for only thus do we obtain fixed points which we can bring into a relationship with one another.” WayMindHumansChildrenUseShowsEarthFormOrderFictionFixedAssumptionUrgesServingHuman MindCaptureDividesSchemesParallelsChaoticUnrealFlux Author:Alfred Adler
“I am drawn, as a reader, to detail-drenched stories about human lives affected as much by the internal as by the external, the kind of fiction that Jane Smiley nicely describes as 'first and foremost about how individuals fit, or don't fit, into their social worlds.'” WorldFirstsHumansKindStoriesIndividualSocialFictionReaderFitDetailsHuman LifeInternalsAffectedJaneSmiley Author:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“Sunshine takes its intelligent and honourable place in the history of grownup science fiction on the screen and on the page: a genre that seeks to break free of parochialism and think about where and why and what we are without the language of religion... I loved Sunshine for its radical proposal that humans can and will do something about a catastrophe, and that our weapons could be used up in the service of preservation.” ThinkingHumansUsedLanguageFictionBreakWeaponsPagesIntelligentScience FictionScreensRadicalGenreSunshineCatastrophePreservationProposalGrownupsParochialism Author:Peter Bradshaw
“Narrative and metaphysics alike become flimsy and frivolous if they venture too far from the home base of all humanism - the single, simple human life that we all more or less lead, with its crude elementals of nurture and appetite, love and competition, the sunshine of well-being and the inevitable night of death. We each live this tale. Fiction has no reason to be embarrassed about telling the same story again and again, since we all, with infinite variations, experience the same story.” IfsHumansWellsReasonStoriesHomeNightSimpleFictionInfiniteCompetitionHumanismTalesWell BeingInevitableNarrativeHuman LifeSunshineNo ReasonAppetiteAgain And AgainEmbarrassedVentureNurtureMetaphysicsVariationCrudeFrivolousElementalsHome Base Author:John Updike
“[Social] science fiction is that branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance on human beings.” HumansLiteratureSocialHuman BeingsFictionConcernedImpactScience FictionBranchesSocial Science Author:Isaac Asimov
“You just did a whole read-through. The lie that brought us into war was that Iraq was a threat to us. Well, now it is a threat. Now it is a terrorist hotbed. The fiction is now reality. And now we have to deal with it. It was an attempt at a corporate takeover. This was about oil. It wasn't about human rights. It's not about human rights.” HumansWellsWarWholeRealityLyingDealsFictionRightsThreatHuman RightsIraqOilTerroristCorporateTakeovers Author:Janeane Garofalo
“I think we tried to make a film [Moon] that was about human beings as opposed to going from one special effects set piece to the next one, which is what a lot of science fiction films these days do.” ThinkingHumansFilmNextHuman BeingsFictionPiecesSpecialEffectsMoonScience FictionThese DaysThe Next OneSpecial Effects Author:Duncan Jones
“Poetry might be more about the eternal verities, the essence of the human soul, and - although it's reductive to say so - fiction has perhaps been more about the differences between the unconstrained world of the imagination and the realities you run into, day-to-day, when you're riding your donkey.” WorldHumansSoulRealityMightRunningImaginationDifferencesFictionEternalEssenceRidingDay To DayHuman SoulDonkey Author:Chad Harbach
“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.” HumansHas BeensStoriesFictionVisionComfortableWorkersBusyVery GoodAppealsParadiseFlawsFactoriesUtopiaStaticUtopianFactory WorkersTantalizingFatal FlawsFourier Author:Christine Jennings
“Of course, it's always difficult to disentangle fact from fiction in relation to, e.g., the singularity project. Many scientists I know are dismissive of transhumanist claims, BUT the last 100 years has surely taught us never to underestimate the pace and scope of scientific progress. However, even if much of this turns out to be science-fiction, it also reveals a way of thinking about human life that I find deeply troubling.” IfsThinkingKnowsWayYearsHumansFactsLastsTurnsCoursesDifficultFictionProgressTaughtProjectsScientistClaimsRelationScience FictionHuman LifePaceUnderestimateScopeWay Of ThinkingTaught UsSingularityScientific Progress Author:George Pattison
“The variety within Mann's fiction is impressive and fascinating. But Joyce is even more various and many-sided. He begins his career with a wonderful sequence of bleak studies about the ways in which human lives can go awry - in my view, Dubliners is underrated.” WayHumansViewsFictionCareersStudyWonderfulVariousVarietyHuman LifeFascinatingSequenceImpressiveBleakUnderratedJoyce Author:Philip Kitcher
“As a fiction writer, one of things you learn is God lives in specificity. You know, human kindness is increased as we pursue specificity.” KnowsHumansFictionKindnessPursueFiction WritersGod LifeHuman KindnessSpecificity Author:George Saunders
“I feel akin to [William] Shakespeare in the sense that, as I see it, he lived to dramatize the unfailingly exciting, unfathomably strange interplay among human beings that constitutes "scenes" in his plays, and constitutes "story" in prose fiction.” FeelsHumansPlayStoriesHuman BeingsFictionStrangeSceneExcitingProse Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“To think that humans evolved from lower species BUT the evolutionary process somehow came to a halt and we all arrived at the finish line simultaneously is to embrace a fiction possibly more implausible than Christianity.” ThinkingHumansProcessLinesFictionChristianityEmbraceSpeciesHaltFinish Line Author:Jim Goad
“I think that people have expectations of themselves and other people that are based on these fictions that are presented to them as the way human life and relationships could be, in some sort of weird, ideal world, but they never are. So you're constantly being shown this garbage and you can't get there.” PeopleThinkingWorldWayHumansFictionExpectationsIdealsHuman LifeGarbageIdeal World Author:Charlie Kaufman
“I have never quite understood - and this is no doubt my failing - I never quite understood why you would read fiction to understand the human condition.” HumansFictionDoubtFailingConditionsUnderstoodNo DoubtHuman ConditionNever Quit Author:Richard Dawkins
“I'm repledging myself to human-scale values. As a fiction writer, the best data comes through the senses and is then processed through many revisions. We have to learn to be intelligent assessors of the data coming in to us and what it's doing to our mental process.” HumansValuesProcessFictionIntelligentSensesScalesDataFiction WritersRevision Author:George Saunders
“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.” IfsThinkingWorldHumansArtIdeasSelfPoliticalMotivationLiteratureEnergyLinesPayAttentionFictionWorryShapesGoodnessAppreciateComplexesNotionLiberalismAbandonWorks Of ArtConformEquationsAmbiguousPhilistines Author:Pankaj Mishra