Immigrant Fiction Quotes

For the Irish, life is a matter of perpetual grievance. We remember the Famine, but forget the Draft Riots. We seal off our neighborhoods to strangers, but allow our own priests to victimize our own children. We worship violence and we enslave ourselves to alcohol, we lie and steal and kill without conscience for generations at a time. But it's all right in the end, and do you know why? Because we don't tolerate lust. ~ Mary Gordon

Never mind that she's been hearing this soliloquy from strangers since she was born, in the Year of the Fire Horse, twin sixes after the nineteen. Never mind the order of questions invariably changes even if the questions themselves do not: 'How long have y'all lived here? Do you even speak English? Oh, well. Your English is so good. Bless your heart, you must miss your people. You stick out like a raisin in a big bowl of oatmeal. Is it true that you worship cows? . . . Have you even heard of the Bible? Don't get all uppity on me, don't turn away. I know you think you don't have to listen. But this is my country. You do. When are y'all heading back? Y'all best be getting back to where you came from, you hear? No need to overstay your welcome. ~ Devi S. Laskar

But inside loss there can be gain, too,like the small silver spider Bela had discovered one dewy morning, curled asleep at the center of a rose. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

I don't put much stock in remembering things. Being able to forget is a superior skill. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Nostalgia is a particular affliction of immigrant fiction, and it's led to a kind of sclerosis of the form. I hate nostalgia, and I feel it's good to be aware of the politics of these genres. ~ Neel Mukherjee

It's a great honor, m'ijo. We know that. I'm sure everyone in Ysleta is proud of you. But this is who you are," she said, for a moment scanning the dark night air and the empty street. A cricket chirped in the darkness. "God help you when you go to this 'Havid.' You will be so far away from us, from everything you know. You will be alone. What if something happens to you? Who's going to help you? But you always wanted to be alone; you were always so independent, so stubborn."

"Like you. ~ Sergio Troncoso

All American fiction could be classified as immigrant fiction. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

She lifts her eyes, and there is Death in the corner, but not like a king with his iron crown, as the epics claimed. Why, it is a giant brush loaded with white paint. It descends upon her with gentle suddenness, obliterating the shape of the world. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

If certain books are to be termed 'immigrant fiction,' what do we call the rest? Native fiction? Puritan fiction? This distinction doesn't agree with me. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

I made many decisions, some awful and others brilliant, but I found ways to keep that openness in my soul that meant more to me than breathing. I told them over the years what I was doing, how I was trying what no one in my family had ever tried to do. When I was failing, I admitted that as well, and they listened politely. I also knew that's all they could do. One lonely night in Connecticut, I pulled myself from a window's ledge. No one else next to me. Another day I chose to do something someone like me should have never accomplished, and yet I did, and kept going. I learned to recognize when others, like Jean, were much better than me, because they had faith in my soul. I believed in very little, but I kept going until I would get tired or defeated, and then I would take time to discover another wall to throw myself at. I was, and I am, and I will be, a peculiar kind of immigrant's son. I got old, and that made everything better, including me. ~ Sergio Troncoso

There, I was ridiculed for being an inauthentic American, and now I am being charged with being an inauthentic Russian. I do not yet understand that this very paradox is the true subject of so-called immigrant fiction. ~ Gary Shteyngart

Mujo is a refugee in Germany, has no job, but has a lot of time, so he goes to a Turkish bath. The bath is full of German businessmen with towels around their waists, huffing and puffing, but every once in a while a cell phone rings and they pull their phone out from under the towel and say, Bitte? Mujo seems to be the only one without a cell phone, so he goes to the bathroom and stuffs toilet paper up his butt. He walks back out, a long trail of toilet paper behind him. So a German says, you have some paper, Herr, sticking out behind you. Oh, Mujo says, it looks like I have received a fax. ~ Aleksandar Hemon

The magic of fiction seems to be the more specific you are, the more universal you end up becoming. ~ Shyam Selvadurai

What I felt was, if you spend your life just writing fiction, you are going to falsify your material. And the fictional form was going to force you to do things with the material, to dramatize it in a certain way. I thought nonfiction gave one a chance to explore the world, the other world, the world that one didn't know fully. ~ V.S. Naipaul

The dead are not always so dumb as you think, it takes much more to die than you would believe. ~ E.J. Koh

I could've gone on and on but the truth was all that mattered.
My brother died because someone was jealous. ~ Laura Anderson Kurk

And thus, lost in her own thoughts,she let Bacchus do whatever he wished & she only sat up when he accidentally pressed too hard on her tender flesh."Oh! Sorry! I was only admiring the beauty of Nature!" Bacchus said when he noticed her grinning at him. "Let me wash myself first,Sir,if you wish to taste my Nectar,"she suggested.[MMT] ~ Nicholas Chong

There is not always a light at the end of the tunnel. That is why you must carry a torch. ~ J. Zachary Pike

Everyone else thinks I'm a nonfiction writer. I think it's because my nonfiction is easier to find. But I write both in equal measure. I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself, and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing. ~ Roxane Gay

The Dark Stranger nodded in agreement knowing the time had come for the boys to know more, but it would not be tonight. He grabbed Kinsu's arm, nodded again, and then ran off into the night. With Chase and Rhee standing behind Kinsu, whose hair was briefly whipped from the air flying from the Dark Stranger's cape, they understood that they were all alone. They had no clues to a dramatic puzzle which had simply been forced upon them. "Unbelievable," said Kinsu. And they all walked away feeling somber, drained, and still wondering, who was that girl? ~ K.N. Smith

What's hard, in hacking as in fiction, is not writing, it's deciding what to write. ~ Neal Stephenson

This is the essence of science fiction, the conceptual dislocation within the society is generated in the author's mind, transferred to paper, and from paper it occurs as a convulsive shock in the reader's mind, the shock of dysrecognition. ~ Philip K. Dick

:The way to the Seaglass Stair will be long and arduous. There will be those who wish to stop you. They will kill you to keep you from succeeding.:
:Why? That's insane.:
:As if insanity were some fabrication, some dark tale Hemfra told you one night when you were a child and refused to sleep. There will always be resistance to anything and everything, defying all logic, all natural sense of self-preservation. There will be those who wish for you to simply let the world fade away. It is the way of humans to be illogical for the sake of personal conviction and made up nonsense.: ~ Ash Gray

It's safer to use fiction, which will not be taken for literal truth, but which, like Jesus' stories, can tell the truth indirectly yetpowerfully. ~ Wayne Martindale

I think the deepest thing is that many fiction writers tell stories but are not elegant writers. But, we're not writing journalism when we're making literature. ~ Edward Hirsch

His real name is A.J., but he is known in Heaven as Armor because of how resilient he is in his faith and how persistent he is with his prayers. ~ Sunshine Rodgers

Now, at last, she understood her great attraction to him. Here was the companion of her spirit. Here, indeed, was love. ~ Anne Rouen

I am unbelievably nervous.
It is most unlike me.
This girl is really messing with my mojo. ~ Siobhan Davis

Sheftu," she whispered, "it's all over."
"Nay, little one. It's just beginning. Many things are beginning. ~ Eloise Jarvis McGraw

What's more insane? Hearing imaginary voices? Or not hearing the real ones? ~ Forrest Carr

I heard the stories of how the spheres would lead your kind to safety in times of need, so when the thing started going nuts in my pocket... ~ Trevor Alan Foris

Fiction is to grown men what play is to the child. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I exaggerate a lot and I get fiction and reality mixed up, but I don't actually ever lie. ~ Lucia Berlin

People are often asking me if the things in my short stories really happened to me. I always think this is the same question to ask of a life - did this really happen to me? The body doesn't lie. But when we bring language to the body, isn't it always already an act of fiction? With its delightfully designed composition and color saturations and graphic patterns? Its style and vantage point? Its insistence on the mind's powerful force of recollection in the face of the raw and brutal fact that the only witness was the body? ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

The queen's mocking laughter cut in. "This is your treasure, Lord Sheftu?"
"Aye. The greatest treasure in Egypt - a maid whose loyalty cannot be bought. Whatever bargain we make, Daughter of the Sun, must include her freedom. ~ Eloise Jarvis McGraw

He washed gold his entire life and remained poor his entire life. ~ Shouhua Qi

A five-week sand blizzard?" said Deep Thought haughtily. "You ask this of me who have contemplated the very vectors of the atoms in the Big Bang itself? Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff. ~ Douglas Adams

Since the war, we're the only intelligent species left in the universe, therefore we think everything in this universe has to conform to our paradigm of what makes sense. Do you have any idea how arrogant that view is and on how little of this universe we base it? ~ Robert Buettner

I'm an observer. I am fascinated by people and how their minds work (and, of course, my own). Why we are the way we are, why we do the things we do – and that interest drives my writing. I was a physicist before fiction claimed my soul, so I'm an experimenter. I'm open to different ways of thinking. I like exaggerating, making things up. I'm a very open, honest person in life and that's the way it should be, but when it comes to fiction, I want to pour a few sharp objects into the comfort zone. Our fears are powerful, yet we've all got a desire to laugh and be entertained. I could have followed the same path I do now as a scientist, examining how the brain works. Ironically I get much more freedom to experiment as a writer. That's why I love it. ~ Carla H. Krueger

There is a lot of scepticism today as to whether memoir is real. But when fiction is done at a certain level there is scepticism as to whether it is really fiction. ~ Junot Diaz

The tales are quite hard to remember and I found that going back to it between bouts of writing fiction, I was having to retrace my steps quite a lot, because the stories are very intricate and the material is elusive, and possibly with age, my memory is not as malleable as it used to be. ~ Marina Warner

I wasn't a big science-fiction fan growing up. But I loved Jules Verne and Sherlock Holmes. Both came into play on 'The X-Files.' ~ Chris Carter

I tend to wait for true stories to mature into fiction. Most of my fiction grew out of a long-germinating real-life situation. ~ Aleksandar Hemon

It is necessary to create constraints, in order to invent freely. In poetry the constraint can be imposed by meter, foot, rhyme, by what has been called the "verse according to the ear." ... In fiction, the surrounding world provides the constraint. This has nothing to do with realism ... A completely unreal world can be constructed, in which asses fly and princesses are restored to life by a kiss; but that world, purely possible and unrealistic, must exist according to structures defined at the outset (we have to know whether it is a world where a princess can be restored to life only by the kiss of a prince, or also by that of a witch, and whether the princess's kiss transforms only frogs into princes or also, for example, armadillos). ~ Umberto Eco

I am War. I am Death. I am the Unloved God. ~ T.S. Pettibone

If I'm desperate, I'll read anything. But even when I can be choosy, I still have no hard-and-fast rules. I have rules about what I won't read, rather than what I will. No science fiction, no romance, no chick lit. Although even these rules can be broken. ~ Sonya Hartnett

In that moment, she hated his quiet patient tone, hated the stench of the incense, and hated the beauteous pity painted on the faces of the women on the walls. Their expressions contained serene understanding; their eyes seemed able to peer into her soul. She found their forgiveness suffocating. And above all, she hated the tiny niggling thing in her that wanted to know more. ~ Amy J. Murphy

You can't write any form of fiction unless you enjoy reading it. You must be sincere in your approach. It's no good despising the form. So many people think they could earn some money from writing something for which they have no affection. It won't work. The first thing you have to have is belief. ~ Charlotte Bingham

I'm a magpie in my fiction, taking whatever looks shiny and curious to line the nest of my story. ~ Walter Kirn

Is that part of being a god, manifesting yourselves exclusively in forms of fiction, and making yourselves scarce when it matters? ~ Cees Nooteboom

Only death can finish the fight, everything else only interrupts the fighting. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

When I was a child, science fiction was the first source I've found for information. Science fiction was a very very low cultural stream in those days. It was completly below the radar and no one bothered to censurate it. ~ William Gibson

All I'm saying is that there is a generation gap, and I think it revolves around this public/private thing. Our generation -- we subscribe to the old liberal doctrine of the inviolate self. I'ts the great tradition of realistic fiction, it's what novels are all about. the private life in the foreground, history a distant rumble of gunfire, somewhere offstage. In Jane Austen not even a rumble. Well, the novel is dying, and us with it. No wonder I could never get anything out of my novel-writing class at Euphoric State. It's an unnatural medium for their experience. Those kids...are living a film, not a novel. ~ David Lodge

Whatever may be the sociological value of the legal fiction that 'all men are born free and equal,' there can be no doubt that ... in its biological application, at any rate, this statement is one of the most stupendous falsehoods ever uttered by man through his misbegotten gift of articulate speech. ~ Earnest Hooton

He felt a psychosomatic rush of emptiness before he spoke. "Since we are getting to the real point, I am not stupid John. And it would be foolish to think me ignorant. Isn't this about the Science Nation interview? Isn't this because I mistakenly used the word "soul?" Isn't this about you and the others thinking somewhere along the lines, I had gained an imaginary soul? We all know when you gain a soul, you lose a mind. Don't we john?"
John hesitated briefly staring at Roma. "I believe so yes. Souls are luxuries for speculative minds. Real scientists can't afford such luxuries. They have the world to save."
Roma narrowed his eyes. "Or destroy. ~ Dew Platt

I wish I had devoted all of my time writing to literature.
Those essays in the 60's, they were insolent, you know, like a young persons work. I wouldn't mind if the essays, at some point, evaporated.
I think fiction .. I think literature .. I think narrative, is what lasts.
I do believe that there is such a thing as truth. But I prefer the mode in which truth appears in art or literature. In literature a truth is something who's opposite is also true. ~ Susan Sontag

Only God writes great non-fiction. ~ E.C. Lartigue

Horror is not a genre, it is an emotion. It is a progressive form of fiction, one that evolves to meet the fears and anxieties of its times. ~ Douglas E. Winter

When sex was something godlike, Lust was the profane curiosity that killed many a straying cat. Now, having removed mystery, Lust is less a long-standing, overpowering yearning, more a sudden craving of the appetite. Less quest, more impulse buy. ~ Geoffrey Wood