“Fiction just has a lot more room for ambivalence and internal conflict, contradiction, and for me that sums up so much of what people felt after 9/11 - confusion even. And I think that's hard to capture in journalism.” PeopleThinkingHardFeltRoomsFictionConflictConfusionJournalismContradictionInternalsCaptureAmbivalenceInternal Conflict Author:Amy Waldman
“It can be hard to write a skillfully entertaining fiction, but a great book wants to be more, and wants more from us.” WantWritingBookHardFictionEntertainingGreat Book Author:Guy Gavriel Kay
“The hard-drinking newspaperman is, or used to be, a stock character of fiction. Now he is being phased out of literature just as he is being phased out of life.” HardCharacterUsedLiteratureFictionDrinkingNewspapersUsed To Be Author:Waverley Root
“I hate the whole übermensch, superman temptation that pervades science fiction. I believe no protagonist should be so competent, so awe-inspiring, that a committee of 20 really hard-working, intelligent people couldn't do the same thing.” PeopleShouldBelieveHardWholeHateI BelieveFictionHard WorkI HateIntelligentScience FictionTemptationAweCommitteesCompetentProtagonistsAwe Inspiring Author:David Brin
“[Vathek] has, in parts, been called, but to some judgments, never is, dull: it is certainly in parts, grotesque, extravagant and even nasty. But Beckford could plead sufficient "local colour" for it, and a contrast, again almost Shakespearean, between the flickering farce atrocities of the beginning and the sombre magnificence of the end. Beckford's claims, in fact, rest on the half-score or even half-dozen pages towards the end: but these pages are hard to parallel in the later literature of prose fiction.” EndsHardFactsLiteratureHalfFictionJudgmentPagesClaimsLocalsSufficientColourDullProseScoreDozenContrastNastyParallelsAtrocitiesExtravagantGrotesqueMagnificenceFarce Author:William Thomas Beckford
“Science fiction is hard to define because it is the literature of change and it changes while you are trying to define it.” TryingHardLiteratureFictionScience Fiction Author:Tom Shippey