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Reading Fiction Quotes

Browse 25 quotes about Reading Fiction.

Reading Fiction Quotes

“Lots of women read fiction. Most men don't. Women read fiction written by women and by men. Most men don't. If a man opens a novel,. he likes to have a masculine name on the cover; it's reassuring somehow. You never know what might happen to that external genitalia if you immerse yourself in imaginary doings concocted by someone with the goods on the inside.”

MenReadingFictionMen And WomenStereotypesGender StereotypesReading Fiction
Book:The Summer Without Men
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“Thus, in criticizing fiction we must be careful to distinguish those books that satisfy our own particular unconscious needs --- the ones that make us say, 'I like this book, although I don't really know why' --- from those that satisfy the deep unconscious needs of almost everybody. The latter are undoubtedly the great stories, the ones that live on and on for generations and centuries. As long as man is man, they will go on satisfying him, giving him something that he needs to have --- a belief in justice and understanding and the allaying of anxiety. We do not know, we cannot be sure, that the real world is good. But the world of a great story is somehow good. We want to live there as often and as long as we can.”

JusticeReading Fiction
Author:Mortimer Adler
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“In reading imaginative texts, we inevitably reproduce aspects of ourselves, although this is not simply a matter of arbitrary preference or prejudice. We are all already-constituted subjects, placed in networks of power, and in reproducing ourselves it is also the latter we reproduce. To do otherwise is to risk confronting the powers that give us the sense of who we are, and to embark on the dangerous task of reconstructing ourselves along unfamiliar lines. It is, understandably, easier to use our readings to confirm those powers.”

Reading BooksCulturalReading Fiction
Book:Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam
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“And if I'm guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I'm also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very little of this is necessary to advance the plot. But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.”

IfsWritingLittlesPhilosophyCareReadingSexFictionNovelViolenceClothesNotesGuiltyDescriptionPlotAdvancementCliffsAdvancingFeastingReading Fiction
Author:George R. R. Martin
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“Dad always said that he had enough trouble sorting the fiction out of so-called facts, without reading fiction. He always said that science was already too muddled without trying to make it jibe with religion. He said those things, but he also said that science itself could be a religion, that a broad mind was always in danger of becoming narrow.”

TryingMindSaidEnoughFactsReadingFictionTroubleDangerBecomingDadBroadsHad EnoughSortingReading Fiction
Book:Crime novels: American noir of the 1950s
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“You should never read just for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "hard books." Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god's sake, don't let me ever hear you say, "I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth." Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of "literature"? That means fiction, too, stupid.”

ShouldWritingMeanI CanBookHardMotivationalReadingLiteratureFictionStupidFoolBehaviorPicksLet MeSakeInsaneEnjoymentSmarterJudgmentalWriting FictionReading Fiction
Author:John Waters
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“Writing fiction is not a profession that leaves one well-disposed toward reading fiction. One starts out loving books and stories, and then one becomes jaded and increasingly hard to please. I read less and less fiction these days, finding the buzz and the joy I used to get from fiction in ever stranger works of non-fiction, or poetry.”

WritingWellsBookHardStoriesUsedJoyReadingFictionPleaseFindingsStrangerProfessionThese DaysNon FictionBuzzWriting FictionJadedReading Fiction
Book:Adventures in the Dream Trade
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“Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.”

ThinkingWorldGivingMeanTwoImportantCharacterStoriesTurnsReadingSoundLinesAbilityBrainFictionNovelQuietSkillsComplexesFollowingDisappearFasterStayingBitesEmpatheticSound Bites140 CharacterReading Fiction
Author:Ann Patchett
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