Home / Topics / Function Quotes

Function Quotes

Browse 2701 quotes about Function.

Function Quotes

“I don't mean that literary fiction is better than genre fiction, On the contrary; novels can perform two functions and most perform only one.”

Mean Two Fiction Novel Function Contrary Genre Nasty

Author:Mark Haddon

“I really believe that fiction functions best when stories are allowed to develop in an organic way, so I didn't set out to deliver a specific message.”

Way Believe Stories Fiction Messages Function

Author:Karen Thompson Walker

“Our minds simply don't function in some sort of narrative chronology. I think that one of the great gifts of writing fiction is being able to think about that.”

Thinking Writing Mind Able Fiction Function Narrative Writing Fiction Great Gifts Chronology

Author:Dani Shapiro

“Writing is very castrating in the moment. Fiction in general, it has no function, nobody asks for it.”

Writing Moments Asks Fiction Function

Author:Etgar Keret

“I don't think the function of writing, at least for me as a fiction writer, is to say to people, "Here's the answer." It's not an op-ed.”

People Thinking Writing Answers Fiction Function Fiction Writers

Author:Mohsin Hamid

“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.”

People Thinking Knows World Way Doe Ideas Different America Young Fiction Novel Function Notion Encounters Pakistan Way Of Thinking

Author:Mohsin Hamid

“Interviewer: Have you ever considered writing nonfiction? Mary Doria Russell: Oh, honey, I did! Let's see...There was "A Reconsideration of the Evidence for Cannibalism at the Krapina Neandertal Site." That was a big hit. And who could ever forget "Cutmarks on the Engis II Calvarium"? Then there was "Browridge Development as a Function of Bending Stress in the Supraorbital Region." I got tons of reprint requests for that one. Trust me fiction is better.”

“You can't function in society if you don't involve yourself in the fictions society accepts about time. But you do so with the understanding that you're playing a game.”

Ifs Games Understanding Fiction Accepting Function

Book:Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma

Source: Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma

“To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.”

People World Giving Trying Mean Reason Play Stories Happens Reading Games Fiction Happened Anxiety Happenings Function Narrative Immensity Consoling

Author:Umberto Eco

“The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it.”

Sometimes Science Fiction Function Science Fiction

Author:Frank Herbert

“Scientific practice is above all a story-telling practice. ... Biology is inherently historical, and its form of discourse is inherently narrative. ... Biology as a way of knowing the world is kin to Romantic literature, with its discourse about organic form and function. Biology is the fiction appropriate to objects called organisms; biology fashions the facts "discovered" about organic beings.”

World Way Facts Stories Form Science Literature Fiction Knowledge Practice History Knowing Fashion Objects Accounts Function Historical Narrative Appropriate Biology Organisms Discourse

Author:Donna J. Haraway

“The trouble with science fiction is that you can write about everything: time, space, all the future, all the past, all of the universe, any kind of creature imaginable. That's too big. It provides no focus for the artist. An artist needs, in order to function, some narrowing of focus. Usually, in the history of art, the narrower the focus in which the artist is forced to work, the greater the art.”

Needs Writing Kind Art Bigs Past Artist Order Universe Space Fiction Greater Focus Trouble Creatures Function Science Fiction

Author:Philip J. Klass