Experimental Fiction Quotes

THE COLLECTED SHORT FICTION OF ORSON SCOTT CARD Experience Card's full versatility, from science fiction to fantasy, from traditional narrative poetry to modern experimental fiction. ~ Orson Scott Card

All novels are experimental. ~ Anthony Burgess

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Kane Faucher, Metapharm, Journal of Experimental Fiction #39 ~ Kane X. Faucher

Worse than knowing I needed out, I didn't know what I needed back into. Even when I could feel there was something else beyond the edges of any color in the street or window where no one waited even to just totally ignore me, I couldn't recognize it enough to know how to want it harder. Along each street it was as if I were waiting for some hole to swallow my face. Each moment it didn't made the going into the next step that much less worth doing. This is what life had always felt like. In my mind, expecting the absence of something or someone there before me made the presence in its place feel like the punch line to a routine no one was performing. And where I couldn't find a way to laugh, I became my own stand-in, over and over, like painting white over a window from the inside. ~ Blake Butler

That odd infallible sliding-like-crystal air on water that means day's left dawn for morning. ~ H.D.

The word "avant-garde," for example, despite its note of impartiality, generally serves to dismiss-as though by a shrug of the shoulders-any work that risks giving a bad conscience to the literature of mass consumption. ~ Alain Robbe-Grillet

I love to read and teach experimental fiction but yes, neither this work nor my first novel is really that experimental. It uses some experimental techniques but in the end, I would not say that it is experimental. I'm not sure why. I do a lot of writing on my own, and I have always just written this way. ~ Porochista Khakpour

I want the world to bleed when it brushes up against me. ~ Jonathan Douglas Duran

So is this being in love? I stay with the moment, waiting to find out, the space between us fluctuating with uncertainty. The only thing I am sure of is that each time his lips leave mine they are right back again. ~ Kea Alwang

Our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than fact. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

I read a lot of short fiction, like Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Carver and Wells Tower. ~ Lorde

A recognized fact which goes back to the earliest times is that every living organism is not the sum of a multitude of unitary processes, but is, by virtue of interrelationships and of higher and lower levels of control, an unbroken unity. When research, in the efforts of bringing understanding, as a rule examines isolated processes and studies them, these must of necessity be removed from their context. In general, viewed biologically, this experimental separation involves a sacrifice. In fact, quantitative findings of any material and energy changes preserve their full context only through their being seen and understood as parts of a natural order. ~ Walter Rudolf Hess

If Fobbit leaves a reader feeling stranded in some bland in-between territory, then I haven't done my job. But having said all that, I didn't consciously write the book with a particular moral intent. I took what I experienced and processed it through the sausage factory of fiction. It's up to readers to interpret what's on the page - as is the case with any novel. ~ Dave Abrams

As long as I live, I will always remember those wee children standing at the railing on that ship. - John Hanlon, the sailor ~ Deana J. Driver

The words, sliding into his mind, were vibrant with her emotions. Dripping with sensitivity. Weeping with her reaction. Intimate beyond measure. Because she murmured forgiveness into his mind, she gave more of herself away to him. ~ Christine Feehan

Someday someone will write a pathology of experimental physics and bring to light all those swindles which subvert our reason, beguile our judgement and, what is worse, stand in the way of any practical progress. The phenomena must be freed once and for all from their grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of man's common sense. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

No, they can't. They can't be Luke Skywalker. ~ Aaron Allston

Writing for children can be completely honest in non-cynical ways. In adult books you're required to be cynical. It embarrasses us to say positive things. You can have affection and hope in children's books, but that is out of fashion in adult fiction. ~ Lloyd Alexander

Fiction operates through the senses, and I think one reason that people find it so difficult to write stories is that they forget how much time and patience is required to convince through the senses. No reader who doesn't actually experience, who isn't made to feel, the story is going to believe anything the fiction writer merely tells him. The first and most obvious characteristic of fiction is that it deals with reality through what can be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, and touched. ~ Flannery O'Connor

I am the Merlin, bane of the Vale, terror of the four lands. I am chaos and shadows, the last of my people. ~ Jennifer Silverwood

The desire to confess ... lies at the root of most fiction writing ... ~ Lucy Poate Stebbins

I'm a failed poet. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative language, which goes against the trend in fiction. ~ Jesmyn Ward

What a thraldom, to be able to dream and only then to be free! ~ Constantina Maud

In France, it's always about life, normal life. We always stick with these realistic things. So when French people are dreaming about American movies, they go and see the thrillers, and Westerns, and science fiction, huge entertaining movies. ~ Berenice Bejo

I wrote fiction during my entire childhood, from age 4 to 18, and started writing plays when I went to Yale and Oxford. ~ Taiye Selasi

I do not know who first invented the myth of sexual equality. But it is a myth willfully fostered and nourished by certain semi-scientists and other fiction writers. And it has done more, I suspect, to unsettle marital happiness than any other false doctrine of this myth-ridden age. ~ Phyllis McGinley

Usually I read several books at a time - old books, new books, fiction, nonfiction, verse, anything - and when the bedside heap of a dozen volumes or so has dwindled to two or three, which generally happens by the end of one week, I accumulate another pile. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Sitting there with Hadden, I realized how uncomplicated real happiness was: a cup of coffee, a light rain, a good friend sitting by your side-that was true happiness. ~ B.J. Tiernan

She'd done the right thing in God's eyes. That's all that mattered. ~ Ann Shorey

We read about the name Jesus was given at his birth; Immanuel, meaning "God with us". This God wasn't content with dwelling in fiction, this God wasn't content living with the seraphim and this God wasn't content with bulls and goats anymore. This God wanted to dwell with you, with all of your mess, with all of your failures with all the dirtiness that is you; he wanted to sit with you. Here's the amazing thing, God doesn't care if you're a catholic, a Lutheran, Post modern or Emergent; he wants to sit with you. ~ Ricky Maye

There is a long-standing trend of documented trend of UFO appearances and these appearances have led to a fascinating worldwide yet still unsolved enigma. 'Disclosure: The Future is Now' takes a close non-fictional look at the history of UFO sightings and related areas such as alien abductions.and alleged government conspiracies. Disclosure is also a science fiction story of how events in the future may return to affect the Earth at the present time. 'Release From Stasis' is a fictional sequel to the first book's story. ~ Graham Clingbine

Anyone who has truly practiced a religion knows very well that it is [the set of regularly repeated actions that make up the cult] that stimulates the feelings of joy, inner peace, serenity, and enthusiasm that, for the faithful, stand as experimental proof of their beliefs. The cult is not merely a system of signs by which the faith is outwardly expressed; it is the sum total of means by which that faith is created and recreated periodically. Whether the cult consists of physical operations or mental ones, it is always the cult that is efficacious. ~ Emile Durkheim

Just tell him to keep his hands to himself and his python in his pants. ~ Evangeline Anderson

Well, it's my voice, so it's more accessible that way, and there are also all sorts of things like plot and timelines that are already known entities, so for me, it's very different from writing fiction. ~ Alice Sebold

The official line is that, after the war, women couldn't wait to leave the offices and assembly lines and government agencies. But the real story was that the economy couldn't have men coming home without women going home, not unless it wanted a lot of unemployed vets. So the problem became unemployed women. "How you gonna keep us down on the farm after we've seen the world,"' she ad-libs to the old World War I tune. 'Enter the women's magazines, and cookbook publishers, and all these advertising agencies carrying on about the scourge of germs in the toilet bowl, and scuffs on the kitchen floor, and, my favorite, house B.O. Enter chicken hash that takes two and a half hours to prepare. I can just hear them sitting around the conference tables. 'That'll keep the gals out of trouble. ~ Ellen Feldman

There's no set future, only the one we make. ~ Pittacus Lore

You can do it! You can find the strength to carry this load. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God.
Aristotle ~ Bruce Wayne Sullivan

There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks ... Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them ... Decent people lost their jobs ... Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It's the system. ~ Raymond Chandler

No matter how hard it is, or how hard it gets, don't ever, ever, ever lose hope! ~ Jim Yackel

We insist that this stuff we call science fiction is not SCI-FI. For some in the ghetto of Genre this is axiomatic, a secret truth known only to the genre kids, that there is proper science fiction and then there's that SCI-FI shit. ~ Hal Duncan

Life is replete with comedy, drama, horror, suspense, tragedy, romance, mystery, fantasy and a good dose of fiction. While at times the plot may seem to be lacking, the special effects alone are well worth the price of admission. ~ Derek R. Audette

Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors
we hope
of your life come from reading fiction. ~ Orson Scott Card

Every vice of the Empire has been repeated in the Foundation. Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no
change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is
theirs. ~ Isaac Asimov

Where did the fiction go?
When did we begin to write off literature when its contents contained a character who remained true to themselves?
It's not my job as an author to create a character everyone likes, one who personifies perfection.
However…it is my job to be true to the character's personality, even when their attributes are dark, demented, and contrary to all we believe, or have been taught is right.
It is my job to show the reader, the good, bad, and the ugly of the protagonist's true nature that resides within them.
It is not my job to create a character everyone loves, adores, agrees, and sides with.
True literature remains true to the characters within the pages they inhabit; even when the readers may not understand or agree with their integrity or lack thereof.
As an author I share a bond with each and every character within the books I write. Though they are figments of my imagination, they are alive, and to them I will always remain true; even when the reader may, or may not understand.
©2015 Suzanne Steele ~ Suzanne Steele

In other words, science tells us that Adam and Eve are fictions. That Saint Paul or Uncle Tom Cobley and all thought otherwise is irrelevant. They were wrong. ~ Michael Ruse

The French philosopher Jacques Derrida likens writing fiction to a software code that operates in the hardware of your mind. Stringing together separate macros that, combined, will create a reaction. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, then do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be. ~ Philip K. Dick

About my interests: I don't know if I have any, unless the morbid desire to own a sixteen-millimeter camera and make experimental movies can be so classified. Otherwise, I love to eat and drink – it's my melancholy conviction that I've scarcely ever had enough to eat (this is because it's impossible to eat enough if you're worried about the next meal) – and I love to argue with people who do not disagree with me too profoundly, and I love to laugh. I do not like bohemia, or bohemians, I do not like people whose principal aim is pleasure, and I do not like people who are earnest about anything. I don't like people who like me because I'm a Negro; neither do I like people who find in the same accident grounds for contempt. I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright. I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done. ~ James Baldwin

I know nothing of magick," the naked man said to the raven, "except what you told me." He laughed sadly. "And I barely remember that. I tend to drift off when you ramble. ~ Ash Gray

Soylent Brown? It ain't people, but it comes from them. ~ Hal Duncan

But I think I'm coloured by my own wishes, & experimental mood. ~ Virginia Woolf