Best fiction & literature Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 2

“I hate to see great works of literature ghettoized, whereas others that conform to the rules, conventions, and procedures of the genre we call literary fiction get accorded greater esteem and privilege. I also have a problem with how books are marketed, with certain cover designs and typefaces. They're often stamped with an identity that has nothing to do with their effect on the reader.”

Book Problem Certain Hate Literature Fiction Greater Effects Design Identity Reader I Hate Privilege Esteem Genre Conventions Conform Great Work Procedures Typefaces

Author:Michael Chabon

“Science Fiction is the jazz of literature.”

Literature Fiction Science Fiction Jazz

Author:David Brin

“I really am just trying to tell stories. But stories are often grounded in larger events and themes. They don't have to be - there's a big literature of trailer-park, kitchen-table fiction that's just about goings-on in the lives of ordinary people - but my own tastes run toward stories that in addition to being good stories are set against a backdrop that is interesting to read and learn about.”

“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

“I try to tell student writers to read as much as possible, not only literature but philosophy, theory, and to form obsessions. There's a big taboo in fiction creative writing workshops against using the self at all, and I think I try to encourage students to write the self, but to connect the self to something larger, which is to be this thinking, seeing, searching, eternally curious person, and that writing can come out of investigating and trying to understand confusion, and doubts, and obsessions.”

“I think the anti-intellectualism of a lot of contemporary fiction is a kind of despairing of literature's ability to be anything more than perfectly bound blog posts or transcribed sitcoms.”

Thinking Kind Literature Ability Fiction Bounds Contemporary Posts Blogs Sitcom Intellectualism Contemporary Fiction

Author:Ben Lerner

“I would not have majored in English and gone on to teach literature had I not been able to construct a counterargument about the truthfulness of fiction; still, as writers turn away from the industrious villages of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, I learn less and less from them that helps me to ponder my life. In time, I found myself agreeing with the course evaluations written by my testier freshman students:'All the literature we read this term was depressing.' How naive. How sane.”

Source: The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd

“I believe that if it were possible to scrap the whole of existing literature, all writers would find themselves inevitably producing something very close to SF ... No other form of fiction has the vocabulary of ideas and images to deal with the present, let alone the future.”

Ifs Believe Ideas Whole Form Literature I Believe Deals Fiction Vocabulary Scrap

Author:J. G. Ballard

“Great fiction can often present moral messages with greater power and clarity than instructional writing - since literature, after all, penetrates not just the intellect, but the imagination.”

Writing Literature Imagination Fiction Moral Greater Messages Intellect Clarity Penetrate Greater Power

Author:Charles Colson

“[Social] science fiction is that branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance on human beings.”

Humans Literature Social Human Beings Fiction Concerned Impact Science Fiction Branches Social Science

Author:Isaac Asimov

“Many people have tried to define science fiction. I like to call it the literature of exploration and change. While other genres obsess upon so-called eternal verities, SF deals with the possibility that our children may have different problems. They may, indeed, be different than we have been.”

People May Children Has Beens Different Problem Literature Deals Fiction Possibility Eternal Our Children Science Fiction Genre Exploration

Author:David Brin

“I think I had actually served my apprenticeship as a writer of fiction by writing all those songs. I had already been through phases of autobiographical or experimental stuff.”

Thinking Writing Song Literature Stuff Fiction Phases Apprenticeship

Author:Kazuo Ishiguro

“The science fiction I write comes from a pretty deep pool of literature, not just from the reflection of other science fiction films, and I think that gives me somewhat deeper roots.”

Thinking Giving Writing Film Literature Fiction Reflection Roots Give Me Science Fiction Deeper Pool

Author:Jon Spaihts

“Science Fiction is a branch of children's literature.”

Children Literature Fiction Science Fiction Branches Children's Literature

Book:On SF

Source: On SF

“Literature especially has an interesting relationship to photography - to observation, to description, to fiction: taking something that you see and elaborating, jamming, and I think, staging.... taking that moment of observation and letting it go, giving it some wings, following it, rather than nailing it. You're riffing off of reality.”

Thinking Giving Moments Reality Literature Interesting Fiction Photography Wings Following Observation Description That Moment Let It Go Staging

Author:Larry Sultan

“...Don't let me ever hear you say, 'I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth.' Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of 'literature'? That means fiction, too, stupid.”

Mean I Can Literature Fiction Stupid Fool Let Me Writing Fiction Reading Fiction

Author:John Waters

“In high school, in 1956, at the age of sixteen, we were not taught "creative writing." We were taught literature and grammar. So no one ever told me I couldn't write both prose and poetry, and I started out writing all the things I still write: poetry, prose fiction - which took me longer to get published - and non-fiction prose.”

Writing Stills Age School Literature Fiction Creative Taught High School Prose Grammar Creative Writing Non Fiction Sixteen Prose And Poetry

Author:Margaret Atwood

“The beauty of literature - also its limit - is that it is inescapably personal, even if you're writing science fiction.”

Ifs Writing Literature Fiction Limits Science Fiction

Author:Aleksandar Hemon

“Arabs don't do crime fiction. I read crime fiction and I read Arabic literature, and I wish this was a novel I could have read in Arabic.”

Literature Wish Fiction Novel Crime Crime Fiction

Author:Elliott Colla

“For anyone who conceives literature in terms of plurality of perspectives, Finnegans Wake has to be the apogee. For, as we are told, every word in it has three score and ten "toptypsical" meanings - an exaggeration, of course, but an important reminder to readers who like their fiction definite.”

Important Three Courses Literature Term Fiction Perspective Reader Ten Score Definite Reminders Exaggeration Finnegans Wake

Author:Philip Kitcher

“Actually, I'm frequently described as the UK's only translator of Korean literature, but even that isn't accurate - Agnita Tennant is UK-based, Janet Poole is British though lives in Toronto, Brother Anthony was born here though is now a naturalised Korean citizen. There's also Chi-young Kim and Sora Kim-Russell, who are younger and do fiction for commercial houses.”

Young Literature House Born Fiction Brother Citizens British Accurate Korean Toronto Kim Translators

Author:Deborah Smith

“I'm sold as a literary writer in Holland; I'm sold as crime fiction in England. I think of it as just literature.”

Thinking Literature Fiction Crime England Crime Fiction Holland

Author:Karin Slaughter

“I think the deepest thing is that many fiction writers tell stories but are not elegant writers. But, we're not writing journalism when we're making literature.”

Thinking Writing Stories Literature Fiction Journalism Elegant Fiction Writers

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I think what's happening is, it's all - fantasy, science fiction, ghosts, trolls, whatever - finally being called, being admitted to be literature. The way it used to be, before the Realists and the bloody Modernists took over.”

Thinking Way Used Literature Fiction Fantasy Happenings Science Fiction Ghost Used To Be Bloody Realist Troll

Author:Ursula K. Le Guin

“My motto is: write about anything you bloody well like; just make sure you do it effectively. We've all had all the emotions, the rest is research and that leap which some can do and others cannot - it's not really something you can learn, otherwise all academics of literature would be wonderful fiction writers.”

Writing Wells Would Be Literature Can Do Emotion Fiction Wonderful Research Leap Bloody Motto Fiction Writers My Motto

Author:Suhayl Saadi

“Considering that "literary fiction" is a sub-genre that's not quite the same as "literature," either, it follows that the short, semi-humorous bits posted online for all to see are something absolutely other, uniquely themselves compared to canonical short stories, for example, and so it'd probably be best to call it something other than "online lit" since I honestly think very little of it can compare to so-called "literature."”

Thinking Littles Stories Literature Bits Fiction Example Humorous Honestly Compare Genre Online Short Story Considering Lit

Author:Lee Klein

“I think our conception of literature should accommodate not only apolitical writers but also those whose political opinions we find unpalatable. Fiction after all comes from a different, less rationally manipulable side of the brain. I am personally very attached to reactionary figures like Dostoyevsky, Hamsun, and Céline.”

Thinking Should Different Political Literature Sides Lines Brain Fiction Opinion Figures Conception Accommodate Reactionaries Dostoyevsky Apolitical Political Opinions

Author:Pankaj Mishra

“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.”

“Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.”

Reality Literature Fiction Century Becoming Science Fiction Invisible Aviation Sci Fi Predictions 20th Century Margins Sprung Sprung Up Fiction And Reality

Author:J. G. Ballard

“I would like to do another piece of fiction dealing with a number of issues: Lesbian parenting, the 1960's, and interracial relationships in the Lesbian and Gay community.”

Literature Community Numbers Fiction Issues Pieces Gay 1960s Gay Pride Gay Community

Book:Conversations with Audre Lorde

Source: Conversations with Audre Lorde

“Cut quarrels out of literature, and you will have very little history or drama or fiction or epic poetry left.”

Littles Literature Left Fiction Cutting Drama Epic Quarrels Hygiene Epic Poetry

Author:Robert Staughton Lynd

“Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.”

Home Three Literature Fiction Wife Late Whales One Hundred Years Of Solitude

Author:Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“The distinction between literary and genre fiction is stupid and pernicious. It dates back to a feud between Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James. James won, and it split literature into two streams. But it's a totally false dichotomy.”

Two Literature Fiction Stupid Genre Streams Distinction Splits Pernicious Dichotomy Feuds

Author:George R. R. Martin

“The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction. There's a vast literature of outstanding writing on the subject.”

People Way Writing Literature Fiction Subjects Climate Climate Change Best Way Outstanding Non Fiction

Author:Ian Mcewan

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