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Fiction Quotes

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Fiction Quotes

“In time truth and science and nature will adapt themselves to art. Things will happen logically, and the villain be discomfited instead of being elected to the board of directors. But in the meantime fiction must not only be divorced from fact, but must pay alimony and be awarded custody of the press despatches.”

Art Facts Happens Pay Fiction Directors Presses Boards Villain Divorced Board Of Directors Custody Alimony

Book:Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry (Illustrated)

“Funny how the world always praises its opera-singers so much and pays 'em so well and then starves its shoemakers, and yet it needs good shoes so much more than it needs opera--or war or fiction.”

World Needs Wells War Pay Fiction Praise Shoes Singers Ems Opera Opera Singers Good Shoes

Book:The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life

Source: The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life

“You know, as fiction writers, if our instincts are off, we can't pay our bills.”

Ifs Knows Pay Fiction Bills Instinct Fiction Writers

Author:Lorrie Moore

“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

“When you play a non-fiction character it is more responsibility than when you are playing a fiction character because that person lived, and you do want to pay respect to that.”

Want Persons Play Character Pay Fiction Responsibility Non Fiction

Author:Bryan Cranston

“It is an absurd fiction that the churches are useful. They are nothing more than propaganda centers for superstitious faiths and doctrines. Church members have a right to believe in and propagate their various doctrines. But they should pay every item of the cost, of this propaganda, including fair taxation for all church property.”

Should Believe Church Pay Fiction Cost Members Fairs Property Including Various Doctrine Absurd Propaganda Taxation Items Superstitious Church Members

Author:E. Haldeman-Julius

“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

“There is, in my mind, no higher compliment to pay a non-fiction book than to say it reads like a novel.”

Mind Book Pay Fiction Novel Higher Compliment Non Fiction

Author:Jon Weisman

“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

“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.”