“[Michael] Chabon, who is himself a brash and playful and ebullient genre-bender, writes about how our idea of what constitutes literary fiction is a very narrow idea that, world-historically, evolved over the last sixty or seventy years or so - that until the rise of that kind of third-person-limited, middle-aged-white-guy-experiencing-enlightenment story as in some way the epitome of literary fiction - before that all kinds of crazy things that we would now define as belonging to genre were part of the literary canon.” WorldWayWritingYearsKindPersonsIdeasStoriesLastsGuyWhiteFictionCrazyMiddleEnlightenmentThirdsAll KindsGenreBelongingSixtySeventiesMiddle AgedCanonCrazy ThingsEpitomeWhite GuysThird PersonBrash Author:Emily Barton
“Fantasy and science fiction stories are very applicable to talking to your children about the world. They tend to talk about the big questions regarding life and the universe.” WorldChildrenStoriesBigsUniverseFictionTalkingFantasyOur ChildrenScience FictionYour ChildrenBig QuestionsFiction Stories Author:Stephen H. Segal
“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
“You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.” PeopleWorldWritingFictionMirrors Author:Alice Mattison
“In fiction, it's as if you enter a dream world that you created, but your characters have their own free will. They don't do what you want them to do - they get into trouble, do drugs, fight over petty things, and do outrageous things that you wouldn't want your children to do. In other words, you can only provide the background, the seeds - in my case the background of the Vietnamese refugee.” IfsWorldWantChildrenCharacterDreamFightingFictionCasesTroubleDrugOur ChildrenSeedsWhat You WantBackgroundsYour ChildrenFree WillRefugeePettyOutrageousVietnameseDream WorldVietnamese Refugees Author:Andrew Lam
“What writers of fantasy, science fiction, and much historical fiction do for a living is different from what writers of so-called literary or other kinds of fiction do. The name of the game in F/SF/HF is creating fictional worlds and then telling particular stories set in those worlds. If you're doing it right, then the reader, coming to the end of the story, will say, "Hey, wait a minute, there are so many other stories that could be told in this universe!" And that's how we get the sprawling, coherent fictional universes that fandom is all about.” IfsWorldKindDifferentEndsStoriesUniverseGamesNamesWaitingFictionFantasyMinutesParticularReaderCreatingScience FictionHistoricalHeyHistorical FictionFandomsFictional Worlds Author:Neal Stephenson
“Most people have made this mistake of thinking Middle-earth is a particular kind of earth or is another planet of the science fiction sort but it's just an old fashioned word for this world we live in, as imagined surrounded by the Ocean.” PeopleThinkingWorldKindMadeEarthMistakeFictionMiddleThis WorldParticularPlanetsOceanScience FictionOld FashionedMiddle Earth Author:J. R. R. Tolkien
“Fiction writers have their own world, and poets have their own world, and literary criticism has sort of passed over into cultural studies in the university, and so on. They seem more disconnected from each other than they did when I first began to write.” WorldWritingFirstsSeemsFictionStudyPoetCriticismUniversityFiction WritersDisconnectedLiterary Criticism Author:Robert Hass
“My fiction is a very accurate reflection of the world we live in. Certainly, in some stories, that reflection is amplified but America elected a man who enjoys grabbing women by their pussies.” MenWorldStoriesAmericaEnjoyFictionReflectionAccuratePussyGrabbing Author:Roxane Gay
“Fiction offers escape but it also interrogates the world we live in, whether the past, present or future.” WorldPastFictionOffersPast Present Author:Roxane Gay
“I always wanted to be a fiction writer, but I couldn't figure out how you could be a novelist and make any money, which continues to be a problem for novelists the world over.” WorldProblemWantedFictionFiguresNovelistsFiction Writers Author:Anna Quindlen
“I watched a documentary about the immigrant crisis around the world. And it does make me blush at all the times I've stood up on the stage and given your speech about the healing power of fiction.” WorldDoeGivenHealingFictionStageSpeechCrisisAround The WorldImmigrantsDocumentariesStood Up Author:George Saunders
“Science fiction annoyed me because it was like, "Why is the world as it is not enough for you?"” WorldEnoughFictionScience FictionAnnoyed Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“The religious paradigm and the science fiction paradigm are different. Apologies to science fiction fans, but the paradigm there is to create a new world and describe it with a kind of specificity that we describe the world we inhabit. Religiosity, on the other hand, does none of that.” WorldKindDoeDifferentHandsReligiousFictionFansScience FictionNew WorldApologyParadigmSpecificity Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“I felt like I was a writer, and I just thought filmmaking was the best way for me to express that, because it allows me to embrace the visual world that I love. It's allows me to interact with people, to be more social than fiction or poetry, and it felt like the right way for me to tell the stories that felt pressing to me.” PeopleWorldWayStoriesSocialFeltFictionEmbraceBest WayVisualsFilmmakingRight Way Author:Lena Dunham
“Whether or not you're writing fiction or you're making sculptures. You're trying to create a space. You're trying to make something where your own epiphanies and your own desires and your own understanding of the world can reveal itself.” WorldWritingTryingDesireUnderstandingSpaceFictionSculptureEpiphanyWriting Fiction Author:Denison Witmer
“In Pakistan, many of the young people read novels because in the novels, not just my novels but the novels of many other Pakistani writers, they encounter ideas, notions, ways of thinking about the world, thinking about their society that are different. And fiction functions in a countercultural way as it does in America and certainly as it did in the, you know, '60s.” PeopleThinkingKnowsWorldWayDoeIdeasDifferentAmericaYoungFictionNovelFunctionNotionEncountersPakistanWay Of Thinking Author:Mohsin Hamid
“The anger is useful too because when things about the world upset you, that is really a fertile feeling to channel into fiction and to put out into books.” WorldBookFeelingsFictionUpsetFertile Author:Mohsin Hamid
“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
“There are some serious limitations in Mo Yan's situation as a writer in China today - just as there are for Jia Zhangke, one of the world's greatest film directors. He can only phrase his dissent obliquely, in his art. Writers in "free" societies labor under no such constraints. They can write more or less whatever they want in both their fiction and their commentary. Yet so many of them look oddly inhibited, even timid, and depressingly a couple of prominent figures actually positioned themselves to the right of their governments, intelligence agencies, and corporations.” WorldWantWritingLooksArtGovernmentTodayFilmFictionSituationFiguresSeriousCoupleDirectorsLaborChinaLimitationCorporationsPhrasesAgencyDissentConstraintsCommentaryFree SocietyProminentFilm DirectorsIntelligence Agencies Author:Pankaj Mishra
“For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.” WorldMayMotivationalReadingNumbersFictionPeriodsOffersLimitsReading BooksBiographiesBook Reading Book:Education of a Wandering Man Source: Education of a Wandering Man