Literary Bias Quotes

it strikes me that the writers most deeply concerned with the state of literary fiction and its biases against women could do a lot worse than trying to coin some terms of their own: to name the archetypes they wish to invert or criticise and thereby open up the discussion. If authors can be thought of as magicians in any sense, then the root of our power has always rested with words: choosing them, arranging them and – most powerfully – inventing them. Sexism won't go away overnight, and nor will literary bias. But until then, if we're determined to invest ourselves in bringing about those changes, it only makes sense to arm ourselves with a language that we, and not our enemies, have chosen.

May 14, 2011 Blog post ~ Foz Meadows

The pen had been mightier than the sword but then the tongue took over. ~ Amit Abraham

The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek - it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.
- Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture, 1993 ~ Toni Morrison

You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly, literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

In matters of religion a skeptical mind is not a higher manifestation of virtue than is a believing heart, and analytical deconstruction in the field of, say, literary fiction can be just plain old-fashioned destruction when transferred to families yearning for faith at home. ~ Jeffrey R. Holland

Her life with others no longer interests him. He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the minute secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book. ~ Michael Ondaatje

The deeply satisfying aspect of the rediscovery of Zora Neale Hurston is that black women generated it primarily to establish a maternal literary ancestry. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

I called Miss Daphne, but she says she doesn't want 'er tea. She's got 'er nose stuck in a book. Useless, I think it's called, by some woman named Joyce. ~ Alan Bradley

I still think 'The Lord of the Rings' is the greatest literary achievement in my lifetime. Like so many other people, I couldn't wait for the second and then the third book. Nothing like it had ever been written. ~ Christopher Lee

and here instead's another version of what was happening that morning, as if from a novel in which sophia is the kind of character she'd choose to be, prefer to be, a character in a much more classic sort of story, perfectly honed and comforting, about how sombre yet bright the major-symphony of winter is and how beautiful everything looks under a high frost, how every grassblade is enhanced and silvered into individual beauty by it, how even the dull tarmac of the roads, the paving under our feet, shines when the weather's been cold enough and how something at the heart of us, at the heart of all our cold and frozen states, melts when we encounter a time of peace on earth, goodwill to all men; a story in which there's no room for severed heads; a work in which sophia's perfectly honed minor-symphony modesty and narrative decorum complement the story she's in with the right kind of quiet wisdom-from-experience ageing-female status, making it a story that's thoughtful, dignified, conventional in structure thank god, the kind of quality literary fiction where the slow drift of snow across the landscape is merciful, has a perfect muffling decorum of its own, snow falling to whiten, soften, blur and prettify even further a landscape where there are no heads divided from bodies hanging around in the air or anywhere, either new ones, from new atrocities or murders or terrorisms, or old ones, left over from old historic atrocities and murders and terrorisms and bequeathed to the fut ~ Ali Smith

Rad had written a two-sentence response for his comparison/contrast between Moby Dick and The Old Man and the Sea:

"The fishermen lost their fish, and that was IT. Nothing to write books about, and the 'literary devices' you want listed are nothing but made-up complications for a useless major. ~ Emm Oh

The question of manuscript changes is very important for literary criticism, the psychology of creation and other aspects of the study of literature. ~ Umberto Eco

If I had to choose one author to critique By The Next Pause it would be author Lee Maracle. She is a fascinating and incredible storyteller. After listening to her speak at this year's Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD), I think she would be that one person who could tear my work apart, down to the studs, but then help me dig even deeper with one of her lovely anecdotes that would set everything straight again. ~ G. Barton-Sinkia

The greatest misfortune of all is not to be able to bear misfortune. ~ Bias Of Priene

The discovery of instances which confirm a theory means very little if we have not tried, and failed, to discover refutations. For if we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmation, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favour of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted. ~ Karl Popper

Faith for her was habit and family loyalty, a reverence for the Bible which was also literary, admiration for her mother and father. And then that thrilling quiet of which she had never felt any need to speak. ~ Marilynne Robinson

In the analysis of books, as in the analysis of complex world events, we hover between two kinds of error: ascribing too much meaning where there is little, if any, to be found, and ignoring meaning that stares us right in the face. ~ J.C. Hallman

It is not a sin to introduce a personal bias that can be recognized and discounted. The sin in historical composition is the organization of the story in such a way that bias cannot be recognized. ~ Herbert Butterfield

I arrived from Harvard, where I had studied philosophy and the history of ideas, with a bias toward literature and formal thought. ~ Robert Darnton

We who have seen the truth will reshape the world, and Ireland shall be our entrance to this world beyond words. ~ Orna Ross

If you've been around as long as I have, watching the literary scene, then you know that who's in and who's out changes by the year. It's really a very fluid situation that requires that the person who is having the good luck now isn't having it a year or two from now. ~ Jennifer Egan

Extremely self-conscious in its craft, in many ways The Hand of Ethelberta is an exploration of fiction as illusion, which involves parody of the conventions it employs; romance, melodrama and farce, and a rejection of realism for absurdist and surrealistic effects. The 'hand' of Ethelberta is an obvious, ironic allusion to courtship, and the sub-title, 'A Comedy in Chapters', suggests the novel's affinity with the conventions of Restoration and eighteenth-century comedy of manners. ~ Geoffrey Harvey

But whatever the exact psychology of the process {receiving recognition or literary success}, the present has a way of contaminating the past. And the writing will change accordingly. Turmoil and dilemma once experienced with a certain desperation may be seen more complacently as the writer reflects that through expressing them he has realized his inevitable and well-deserved triumph. The lean years of patient toil when no one paid attention may even begin to seem preferable to the present. The very thing you created in the heat of fierce concentration has destroyed the circumstances that made it possible. The writer is devoured along with his books. ~ Tim Parks

Literary theory has become a parody of science, generating its own arcane jargon. In the process, tragically, it discourages love of literature for its own sake. ~ Nancy Pearcey

There are ultimate truths you cannot hide from no matter how high you climb or how long you sit alone. Everything is on its way somewhere, even if that place feels like nowhere. ~ LeighLa Graham

Those of my critics who declare I have no feeling for form will be filled with delight over the meandering formlessness of these notes. ~ Sherwood Anderson

Even in dialogue, your own style rules your selection. Do not give yourself a blank check of this kind: 'I'll merely reproduce what I think a character like so-and-so would say.' You have to reproduce it in the way your literary premises dictate. ~ Ayn Rand

If Christians do not develop their own tools of analysis , then when issues come up that they want to understand, they'll reach over and borrow someone else's tools- whatever concepts are generally accepted in their general field or in the culture at large.
But when they do that, Os Guiness writes, they don't realize that "They are borrowing not an isolated tool, but a whole philosophical toolbox laden with tools which have their own particular bias to every problem." They may even end up absorbing an entire set of alien principles without even realizing it.
In other words, not only do we fail to be salt and light to a lost culture, but we ourselves may end up being shaped by our culture. ~ Nancy Pearcey

When we want to see someone in a certain way, we find a way, but when we don't we have to wake up and see who they truly are and not what our pain or anger chooses to believe. ~ Shannon L. Alder

A final word. Curious. Many years of reading many books has led me to a somewhat bizarre literary critical theory, namely that all significant texts are distinguished by the preponderance of a single word. In Alice's adventures in Wonderland that word is 'curious' (In The Brothers Karamazov it's 'ecstasy', but that needn't concern us here.) The word 'curious' appears so frequently in Carroll's text that it becomes a kind of tocsin awakening us from our reverie. But it isn't the strangeness of Alice's Wonderland that it reminds us of-it's the bizarre incomprehensibility of our own. ~ Will Self

The question is which one of us is the frog and which is the toad,' Willem had said after they'd first seen the show, in JB's studio, and read the kindhearted books to each other late that night, laughing helplessly as they did.
He'd smiled; they had been lying in bed. 'Obviously, I'm the toad,' he said.
'No,' Willem said, 'I think you're the frog; your eyes are the same color as his skin.'
Willem sounded so serious that he grinned. 'That's your evidence?' he asked. 'And so what do you have in common with the toad?'
'I think I actually have a jacket like the one he has,' Willem said, and they began laughing again. ~ Hanya Yanagihara