“Since the show [Helix] is based in real science, there are real-life epidemic scares out there, throughout history, where there are these huge viruses that have wiped out huge populations. So, we're dealing with something that the CDC hasn't seen before, but it comes from a virus. That's something that's based in reality, and then you put the science fiction on that and it's a really interesting combination.” RealShowsRealityInterestingFictionHugeScience FictionPopulationReal LifeCombinationScareVirusesReally InterestingEpidemics Author:Kyra Zagorsky
“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
“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.” ThinkingGivingMomentsRealityLiteratureInterestingFictionPhotographyWingsFollowingObservationDescriptionThat MomentLet It GoStaging Author:Larry Sultan
“For me, wellbehaved books with neat plots and worked-out endings seem somewhat quaint in the face of the largely incoherent reality of modern life; and then again fiction, at least as I write it and think of it, is a kind of religious meditation in which language is the final enlightenment, and it is language, in its beauty, its ambiguity and its shifting textures, that drives my work.” ThinkingWritingKindBookRealitySeemsFacesLanguageReligiousFictionMeditationModernEnlightenmentFinalsPlotShiftingModern LifeAmbiguityTextureNeatQuaint Author:Don DeLillo
“In the past we have always assumed that the external world around us has represented reality, however confusing or uncertain, and that the inner world of our minds, its dreams, hopes, ambitions, represented the realm of fantasy, and the imagination. These roles, it seems to me, have been reversed. The most prudent and effective method of dealing with the world around us is to assume that it is a complete fiction - conversely, the one small node of reality left to us is inside of our own heads.” WorldMindHas BeensDreamRealitySeemsPastLeftImaginationFictionRolesFantasyAmbitionMethodAssumingRealmsUncertainConfusingPrudentInner World Author:J. G. Ballard
“As an actress, I think I really understand that stage where you think you are picking reality in order to feed the fiction, but it happens to be the contrary. It's the fiction that suddenly feeds your reality. And you don't know how it has been done. That's the kind of magical transposition that is art.” ThinkingKnowsKindHas BeensArtDoneRealityHappensOrderFictionKnow HowStageActressesContrary Author:Ludivine Sagnier
“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
“If there was no risk, it wouldn't be art. It wouldn't be worth making. There is risk even in a fairy tale. Fiction is closest to pure narrative, and pure narrative is simply the logic we try to impose on an ever-changing reality.” IfsTryingArtRealityFictionRiskPureLogicTalesNarrativeFairyFairy TaleClosestRisk ItChanging Reality Author:Chris Abani
“I had artists that refused to work on Chappie if they were working on a design that actually said Denel on the side of the thing. But anyway, it's the blurring of fiction and reality that was appealing and I certainly did not want them to be in the movie and not be themselves.” IfsWantSaidRealityArtistSidesFictionDesignFiction And Reality Author:Neill Blomkamp
“I think we need to always mimic reality in our fiction. I think that we can stir things up and reveal a truth beneath the surface in that way as well.” ThinkingWayNeedsWellsRealityFictionTruth IsSurfaceBeneath The Surface Author:Christopher Rice
“When you're writing fiction it's a heightened voice. You're trying to cast a spell, which isn't the same thing as trying to cast someone into it. You are creating a reality but it's a different sort of performance.” WritingTryingDifferentRealityVoiceFictionCreatingPerformancesCastsSpellsWriting Fiction Author:Darryl Pinckney
“The fiction is like the art, in making stuff out of nothing, in creating a hyper-reality to have an experience. If it's strong enough, and your spell is strong enough, then you become, like, ultra-magnetic and then everything comes to you.” IfsArtEnoughRealityStrongStuffFictionCreatingSpellsStrong EnoughMagneticHyperUltras Author:Watkin Tudor Jones
“Many of the concepts we once thought belonged to speculation or science fiction are now part of our understood reality.” RealityFictionUnderstoodConceptsScience FictionSpeculation Author:Michael Helm
“It's fiction's job to express how it feels to be living now, and it's a complex feeling, full of contradiction. To me it often feels like a brutal trivialization of reality.” FeelsFeelingsRealityJobsFictionComplexesContradictionBrutal Author:Michael Helm
“Like a lot of writers, I just got sick to death of conventional fiction. I absolutely couldn't stand the illusion of reality and plot. I just couldn't stomach it.” RealityFictionIllusionSickPlotStomachConventional Author:Jane Alison
“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.” PeopleThinkingFeelsPersonsBodyRealitySexFeltPayAttentionFictionNeededDemandAspectIntentionGenderPrimariesUrgentUnrealTrans Author:Judith Butler
“Any documentary; any capturing of a non-fiction event, is a hyper-realistic condensation of reality that hopefully reveals an emotional truth. It's never the actual literal truth of an event.” RealityFictionEventsEmotionalHopefullyRealisticDocumentariesNon FictionLiteralHyperCondensation Author:Joe Berlinger
“In fact, people seem to be tired of fiction now. There are so many other ways of exploring humanity - by ethnology, psychoanalysis, and so on. It's a little boring to make up stories. So many people think that it's better to be very close to reality and to recount one's life as it is rather than to fictionalize, as they say, that is to transpose, and therefore to cheat.” PeopleThinkingWayLittlesFactsStoriesRealitySeemsHumanityFictionTiredBoringCheatExploringPsychoanalysis Author:Simone de Beauvoir
“For me, fantasy and speculative science fiction are the genres that feel closest to how I feel about being alive. Like, when I feel the most invigorated by just even a walk down the block in twilight, when the street lamps are just coming on and there's mist and some shadowy thing in silhouette in a window, I naturally invest all of those things with deep mythology and mystery and meaning. I think I need to believe in that version of reality because I get very scared when I don't.” ThinkingNeedsFeelsBelieveRealityWalksFictionFantasyAliveMysteryStreetsWindowScience FictionScaredMythologyVersionsBlockGenreTwilightClosestLampsMistSilhouettes Author:Brit Marling
“I'm definitely excited by big ideas, both in what I write and what I read. Most days, reality is so mind-numbingly dull that I don't understand why someone would write strictly realistic stories, given the almost limitless freedom fiction provides. I don't see the point of making believe if you're not going to actually make believe: hang your ass out in the wind, push at every boundary, make almost unreasonable demands on your reader's willingness to suspend disbelief. This is dangerous, and prone to failure, but that's part of what makes it fun.” IfsWritingMindBelieveIdeasStoriesBigsRealityGivenFunFictionDangerousWindReaderDemandExcitedBoundariesAssDullWillingnessRealisticLimitlessDisbeliefUnreasonableMake BelieveBig Ideas Author:Ron Currie Jr.
“I make non-fiction partly because I'm not that good of a writer. My talent, if I have any, is in balancing, capturing and directing reality, rather than creating scenarios.” IfsRealityFictionTalentCreatingScenariosNon Fiction Author:Robert Greene
“To me, the amazing thing is that so much that was science fiction back then, political fiction, today is reality. We have indeed a spacecraft called an international space station. And we have the diversity of this planet working on that ship, including Americans and Russians working side by side. I think the imagineers are the ones that set the goal. And the inventors and the technicians see that as a goal to work toward, or the political scientists and the diplomats. And eventually, that's arrived at.” ThinkingRealityTodayPoliticalSidesGoalSpaceFictionPlanetsDiversityScientistScience FictionIncludingInternationalShipsStationsInventorAmazing ThingsDiplomatsTechniciansSpacecraftInternational Space Station Author:George Takei
“Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.” RealityLiteratureFictionCenturyBecomingScience FictionInvisibleAviationSci FiPredictions20th CenturyMarginsSprungSprung UpFiction And Reality Author:J. G. Ballard
“I don't really believe that documentary is objective reality and fiction is all illusion.” BelieveRealityFictionIllusionObjectivesDocumentariesObjective Reality Author:Mike Mills