“The truth is that literature, particularly fiction, is not the pure medium we sometimes assume it to be. Response to it is affected by things other than its own intrinsic quality; by a curiosity or lack of it about the people it deals with, their outlook, their way of life.” PeopleWayBookSometimesLiteratureDealsFictionQualityTruth IsPureAssumingResponseCuriosityMediumsAffectedOutlook Author:Vance Palmer
“Seventeen years after its intial release, The Empire Strikes Back is still as thrilling and involving as ever. Because of the high quality of the original product, it doesn't show a hint of dating. Neither [Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope nor Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi] were able to match the narrative scope of Empire, which today remains one of the finest and most rousing science fiction tales ever committed to the screen.” YearsStillsWarShowsTodayAbleStarsFictionQualityProductsReturnDatingOriginalsRemainsScience FictionCommittedStrikesScreensTalesReleaseNarrativeEmpiresEpisodesFinestScopeThrillingHintsInvolvingSeventeenHigh QualityNew HopeStrike BackEmpire Strikes Back Author:James Berardinelli
“The proper stuff of fiction' does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss.” DoeFeelingsSpiritStuffBrainFictionQualityPerception Book:Selected essays Source: Selected essays
“Writing fiction is like music. You have to keep it moving. You can have slow movements but there has to be a sense of momentum, of going someplace. You hear a snatch of Beethoven and it has a sense of momentum that is unmistakably his. That's a nice quality if you can do it in fiction.” IfsWritingMovingCan DoFictionQualityNiceMovementYou Can Do ItMomentumWriting FictionKeep It Moving Author:John Updike
“The most popular American fiction seems to be about successful people who win, and good crime fiction typically does not explore that world. But honestly, if all crime fiction was quality fiction, it would be taken more seriously.” PeopleIfsWorldDoeSeemsWould BeWinningFictionQualitySuccessfulTakenCrimeHonestlySuccessful PeopleCrime Fiction Author:George Pelecanos
“... a novel survives because of its basic truthfulness, its having within it something general and universal, and a quality of imaginative perception which applies just as much now as it did in the fifty or hundred or two hundred years since the novel came to life.” YearsTwoTruthFictionQualityNovelPerceptionHundredUniversalFiftyTruth Of LifeImaginativeTruthfulness Author:Elizabeth Bowen
“To my mind, the prose in a non-fiction work that's going to endure has to be of the same quality as the prose in a work of fiction that endures.” MindFictionQualityEndureProseNon Fiction Author:Robert Caro
“When we look at a good deal of serious modern fiction, and particularly Southern fiction, we find this quality about it that is generally described, in a pejorative sense, as grotesque. Of course, I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.... Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.” WritingLooksStillsAbleCoursesFoundDealsFictionQualityCasesModernSeriousReaderSouthRealisticSouthernFreakGrotesque Author:Flannery O'Connor
“Photography's ability to blur truth and fiction is one of its most compelling qualities. But when misused... this ambiguity can have severe, even lethal consequences.... Photography's ambiguity, beautiful in one context, can be devastating in another.” BeautifulAbilityFictionQualityPhotographyConsequenceCompellingSevereAmbiguityBlurMisused Author:Taryn Simon
“Speed is not an indicator of quality in terms of fiction. That's true of one's relative slowness or swiftness - taking 10 years to write a book or taking 10 days to write a book (or a comic or a film or an angry postcard) guarantees nothing in terms of how good or how bad that story is.” WritingYearsBookStoriesFilmTermFictionQualityAngrySpeedComicGuaranteesRelativeIndicatorsSlownessPostcardsSwiftness Author:Chuck Wendig