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Mean Quotes

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Mean Quotes

“It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all becomes fiction as soon as you write it down.”

Writing Mean Matter Literature Fiction Novel Streets Conversation No Matter What Autobiography Biographies Detectives Detective Fiction

Author:Guillermo Cabrera Infante

“The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising ("but of course that's why he was doing that, and that means that...") and it's magic and wonderful and strange.”

“Imagination, it turns out, is a great deal like reporting in your own head. Here is a paradox of fiction-writing. You are crafting something from nothing, which means, in one sense, that none of it is true. Yet in the writing, and perhaps in the reading, some of a character's actions or lines are truer than others.”

Writing Mean Character Action Turns Reading Imagination Lines Deals Fiction Paradox Fiction Writing

Author:Amy Waldman

“First and foremost, I consider myself a storyteller. And I'm endlessly fascinated with people, with what they do and why... and how they feel about it. Which means I'm interested in romance fiction. I was drawn to it, as both a reader and a writer, at the very beginning of my career. It's my kind of storytelling.”

People Feels Firsts Kind Mean Romance Fiction Careers Reader Storytelling Fascinated Storyteller

Author:Debbie Macomber

“Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean. A good novel of any year can initiate us into our own new experience.”

Feels Years May Mean Shows Feelings Action Faces Fiction Novel Behavior Our Actions New Experiences Initiate

Book:On Writing

Source: On Writing

“Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction.”

Mean Play Reality Imagination Fiction Interpretation Volition

Author:Yann Martel

“Labels don't mean much to me one way or another -- except when they close the minds of potential readers. I'd much rather we do away with genres and simply file everything under fiction. I know it can work -- one of my favourite record stores (Waterloo Music in Austin) simply files everything alphabetically and no one seems to have much problem finding what they're looking for.”

Knows Way Mind Mean Problem Seems Fiction Records Reader Findings Stores One Way Labels Genre Favourite Files Austin Record Stores Waterloo

Author:Charles de Lint

“If all stories are fiction, fiction can be true -- not in detail or fact, but in some transformed version of feeling. If there is a memory of paradise, paradise can exist, in some other place or country dimensionally reminiscent of our own. The sad stories live there too, but in that country, we know what they mean and why they happened. We make our way back from them, finding the way through a bountiful wilderness we begin to understand. Years are nothing: Story conquers all distance.”

Ifs Knows Way Years Mean Country Facts Stories Feelings Memories Fiction Happened Findings Distance Details Versions Being True Conquer Paradise Wilderness Transformed Sad Story

Author:Jayne Anne Phillips

“Did men but know that there was a fixed limit to their woes, they would be able, in some measure, to defy the religious fictions and menaces of the poets; but now, since we must fear eternal punishment at death, there is no mode, no means, of resisting them.”

Knows Men Mean Would Be Able Religious Fiction Poet Limits Eternal Punishment Fixed Woe Resisting Menace

Book:Lucretius On the Nature of Things

Source: Lucretius On the Nature of Things

“Science fiction, because it ventures into no man's lands, tends to meet some of the requirements posed by Jung in his explorations of archetypes, myth structures and self-understanding. It may be that the primary attraction of science fiction is that it helps us understand what it means to be human.”

“You asked if I thought my fiction had changed anything in the culture and the answer is no. Sure, there's been some scandal, but people are scandalized all the time; it's a way of life for them. It doesn't mean a thing. If you ask if I want my fiction to change anything in the culture, the answer is still no. What I want is to possess my readers while they are reading my book if I can, to possess them in ways that other writers don't. Then let them return, just as they were, to a world where everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt, and control them.”

People Ifs World Way Want Mean Stills I Can Book Culture Reading Asks Answers Fiction Changed Return Reader Scandal

Book:Conversations with Philip Roth

Source: Conversations with Philip Roth

“Meanwhile, however, what’s most bothersome about Pulp Fiction is its success. This is not to be mean-spirited about Tarantino himself; may he harvest all the available millions. But the way that this picture has been so widely ravened up and drooled over verges on the disgusting. Pulp Fiction nourishes, abets, cultural slumming.”

Way May Mean Has Beens Fiction Millions Available Disgusting Harvest Verge Spirited Pulp Tarantino Mean Spirited Abet

Book:Regarding Film: Criticism and Comment

Source: Regarding Film: Criticism and Comment

“Just because you are a character doesn't mean you have character.”

Mean Character Fiction Pulp

Book:Pulp Fiction

Source: Pulp Fiction