Modern Fiction Quotes

You can't even read American fiction to get a sense of how actual life is lived these days. You read American fiction to learn about dysfunctional white folk doing things that are weird to normal white folks. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I searched modern fiction and poetry for clues to how we confronted and evaded reality, how we articulated our experience and turned to language not to revel ourselves but to hide. I was as sure then as I am now that by looking at contemporary Iranian fiction I could gain access to a real understanding of political and social events. (p289) ~ Azar Nafisi

And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured. ~ Virginia Woolf

There is not now, nor I suspect will there ever be, a le Carre novel with ninjas in it. Most serious novelists are wary of including ninjas in their writing. That's a shame, because many much-admired works of modern fiction could benefit from a few. ~ Nick Harkaway

By all the rules of modern fiction there should have been gunsmoke mingling its acrid blue with the brown haze of corral dust. Dead men should have fallen and been trampled ...
Nothing of this sort happened. ~ B.M. Bower

It allows you to say things that sound very dramatic and get away with it. If you had characters in modern fiction say the same things as they're driving down the street in an Oldsmobile they'd sound ludicrous! ~ Terry Goodkind

Modern fiction brings out the evil in domestic lives, ordinary relations, people like you and me -- Reader! Bruder! as Humbert said. Evil in Austen, as in most great fiction, lies in the inability to "see" others, hence to empathize with them. What is frightening is that this blindness can exist in the best of us (Eliza Bennet) as well as the worst (Humbert). We are all capable of becoming the blind censor, or imposing our visions and desires on others. ~ Azar Nafisi

I lay off a lot modern fiction and only rely on living writers for non-fiction work. ~ Henry Rollins

I will now make an apology, although I will do my best not to repeat it. (Good readers do not read fiction, after all, to put up with the author's regrets.) I will say that having read the best and worst of novels for many years, which is, to remind you, part of a good devil's education, I know by now that not even a loyal reader can stay true to an author who is ready to leave his narrative for an apparently unrelated expedition. ~ Norman Mailer

I feel like science fiction can get a bad rap sometimes because people make something just to throw an alien in it or just to make it weird, and it doesn't really have a story. ~ Drew Roy

Maybe I have a one-track mind, but the best writers and thinkers are focusing on nonfiction these days; this is the genre where a writer can make a mark and change an aspect of the world - much more so than in fiction. ~ Lee Gutkind

An inseparable complement to the exoticism in his stories is the erudition, the bits of specialized knowledge, usually literary, but also philological, historical, philosophical, or theological. This knowledge, which borders on but never oversteps the bounds of pedantry, is quite freely flaunted. But the point is not to show off Borges's wide acquaintance with different cultures. Rather, it is a key element in his creative strategy, the aim of which was to imbue his stories with a certain colorfulness, to endow them with an atmosphere all their own. In other words Borges's learning by his use of exotic settings and characters fulfills an exclusively literary function, which, in twisting the erudition around and making it sometimes decorative, sometimes symbolic, subordinates it to the task at hand. In this way Borges's theology, philosophy, linguistics and so forth, lose their original character, take on the quality of fiction, and, becoming part and parcel of a literary fantasy, are turned into literature. ~ Mario Vargas Llosa

The whole famous Reign of Terror [of the 1790s] in fifteen months guillotined 2,596 aristos. The Versaillists [the anti-Communards of 1871] executed 20,000 before their firing squads in one week. Do these figures represent the comparative efficiency of guillotine and modern rifle or the comparative cruelty of upper and lower class mobs? ~ Guy Endore

Solum invoked a sensation akin to lingering déjà vu in the wake of a dream.

It was not Earth. Its city-planet architectural stylings hid the outline of continents that might have otherwise been recognizable and altered the vibrant blue-and-green color palette enough to erase any familiarity in its silhouette.

Yet if you tilted your head just so and let your gaze unfocus a little, you could almost see Earth. Its echo, its memory. ~ G.S. Jennsen

For it is probable that when people talk aloud, the selves (of which there may be more than two thousand) are conscious of disserverment, and are trying to communicate but when communication is established there is nothing more to be said. ~ Virginia Woolf

Did she still miss me sometimes like I missed her - missing that had no electricity, no lightning, or thunder, a missing like a hand digging into an empty chip bag searching for crumbs, any last salty bit, a missing more like mourning. ~ Jean Kyoung Frazier

Stanley forced a smile to his lips at the memory of the onesided romance; it was silly, after all, a stupid childhood crush. Who'd fall in love with a fictional character? That was the kind of thing you laughed about as an adult. Or at least Harriet had thought so. He couldn't quite do it, though. Couldn't quite see it as a joke. It had felt too real, too raw and wild and fierce, for him to
dismiss it even now. It was love, of a sort, stunted and unformed as it was. For a time, it had kept him sane. ~ Amelia Mangan

Every writer is first a member of a community of readers, and the deepest purpose of reading and writing fiction is to sustain a sense of connectedness, to resist existential loneliness; and so a novel deserves a reader's attention only as long as the author sustains the reader's trust. ~ Jonathan Franzen

We all aspire to be ourselves, an original character in a litany of fiction so vast that we know we cannot. ~ Jasper Fforde

I would try to write 'realistic' fiction, and someone would fly, or there would be a black hole full of demons or a girl who attracted frogs. ~ Nnedi Okorafor

Write me a creature that thinks as well as a man or better than a man, but not like a man. ~ John W. Campbell Jr.

Someone once asked me what I thought horror fiction did. What its purpose was . . . I replied that when I wrote horror fiction, I tried to take the improbable, the unimaginable, and the impossible, and make it seem not only possible--but inevitable. ~ Michael McDowell

At times he has the sensation that he and Marianne are like figure skaters, improvising their discussions so adeptly and in such perfect synchronisation that it surprises them both. She tosses herself gracefully into the air, and each time, without knowing how he's going to do it, he catches her. ~ Sally Rooney

Come on now, laddie," Dunneldeen said. "Just hold on and they'll pull you up to the plane. 'Tis a wee bit cold for a swim. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

I've just finished reading 'The Second Plane,' and I think it's some of the best non-fiction I've ever read. ~ M. J. Hyland

To see the years touch ye gives me joy", he whispered, "for it means that ye live. ~ Diana Gabaldon

You take what you're given, whether it's the cornfields of the Midwest or the coal mines of West Virginia, and you make your fiction out of it. It's all you have. And somehow, wherever you are, it always seems to be enough. ~ Larry Brown

Every day Fu-shee, the smaller children, and I fan out in the hills around Green Dragon to strip trees of their bark and leaves, dig up roots and search for wild grass. We'll eat anything, and we have. But you can't eat a leather belt like it's a crisp cucumber. You soak it, boil it, and chew on it for days. ~ Lisa See

I found myself thinking that perhaps there was something inexorable about the way events unfolded, as if my life
which had begun to seem something not my own but rather something into which I found myself blindly toppling
was indeed something living, that existed without my knowledge but that pulled me along in its strong, insistent undertow. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

The Law of the Twelve Tables, a Roman legislation circa 450 BC, actually required a father to put to death any deformed child (Cito necatus insignis ad deformitatem puer esto). (Modern moral philosophers, like Joseph Fletcher and Princeton University's Peter Singer, advocate the same thing.) ~ Robert J. Hutchinson

There seems to be such a laziness in - and I hate to use this phrase - the modern world. Everything is pumped out so quickly so that you can read it while passing by, like billboards or those flashcards before movie shows. ~ Chris Ware

But perhaps more important, as someone wishing to make a comment or two about contemporary life and values, I don't have to dig through libraries or travel to exotic lands to arrive at a view of our modern situation refracted through the lens of the preindustrial world, or the uncommercialized, unfranchised, perhaps unsanitized-and therefore supposedly more "authentic"-perspective ofthe Third World. Very simply, this is because that "other" world, as alien as if separated by centuries in time, is the one from which I came ~ Sidney Poitier

Of all the things that made the Third Reich a modern dictatorship, its incessant demand for popular legitimation was one of the most striking. ~ Richard J. Evans

That's how we humans are: put something off once, and we'll think of a thousand reasons why we shouldn't do it at all. ~ Andrey Vasilyev

The modern suburb is the product of the car, the five-day week, and the "bankers' hours" of the masses. ~ David Riesman

To a large degree, we are still bound to the modern scientific spirit, that characterizes reality merely by its material and mechanic aspects, without including life, consciousness and the intimate communion with that which poets, musicians and artists bring us in their magnificent works. ~ Leonardo Boff

All these years that I had been waiting for him to return, I had been too anxious and somewhat insecure to develop any plan of action. I had scrupulously avoided giving any thought to it until the time to tackle things head-on arrived, so now I was suffering the consequences of my own indecisiveness. But in all seriousness, what steady plan could there be in matters of the heart? ~ Jeno Marz

Where visual artists are concerned, the Baroque sculptor and architect Bernini and the painter and sculptor Picasso were clearly adept at both experiential and instrumental attending, says Tellegen, as is the modern architect Frank Gehry. Choosing a literary example, he says that F. Scott Fitzgerald once admitted to "wrapping one of his romantic flings in cellophane" for later artistic use and notes that "this kind of heartless but honest professionalism is not uncommon among creative people. ~ Winifred Gallagher

Amy Rapp, my producing partner, and I are drawn to character-driven material. We're developing and producing movies and TV, fiction and non-fiction, studio and independent, broadcast and cable, theatre, and web so our slate is really diverse. ~ Meredith Vieira

Seventeen years after its intial release, The Empire Strikes Back is still as thrilling and involving as ever. Because of the high quality of the original product, it doesn't show a hint of dating. Neither [ Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope nor Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi ] were able to match the narrative scope of Empire , which today remains one of the finest and most rousing science fiction tales ever committed to the screen. ~ James Berardinelli

The expression 'three is a crowd' holds true for both romance and politics. A three-way race is a disaster, because it splits the ballots, making it almost impossible to gain a majority of the votes. It usually results in a runoff. ~ Evette Davis

I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work. ~ Alain De Botton

In darkness there is death. ~ Bob Mayer

We have taught our people to use prayer too much as a means of comfort - not in the original and heroic sense of uplifting, inspiring, strengthening, but in the more modern and baser sense of soothing sorrow, dulling pain, and drying tears - the comfort of the cushion, not the comfort of the Cross. ~ Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy

Can the child who is Dell; be the outer emoodiment of man's quest to save himself? To cure himself? ... Or, to "be" himself? ~ Milkweed L. Augustine

Thank you," she said, tears leaking out of her eyes. "Thank you so much."
A gentle and hesitant hand came down on her back. "Don't cry, Treasure. You'll get me all wet and then I'll melt. I'm made of sugar, don't you know."
(Jack Dandy And Finley) ~ Kady Cross

I don't think Islam has really been understood as a product of globalization. It might be one of these instances where globalism and tribalism ultimately go hand in hand. ~ Franklin Foer

There is something so degrading - at least, one would think that there were something so degrading in the practice of writing as a trade - that anyone who has once earned a livelihood, or part of it, obviously and openly, by popular writing, can never be seriously regarded by any great number of people. And then, of course, "he does too much. ~ Ezra Pound

I don't know any writer of fiction who enjoys trying to point out or dissect whatever they produced with strangers and let them go through it and pick apart what's real and what isn't. ~ Noah Baumbach

from What to Read by Mickey Pearlman - A book for book clubs
From chapter -- "How to Read":
Rule 1: BAN at the outset any discussion that focuses on "Did you like the book." This is not a popularity contest, any worthwhile piece of fiction or non-fiction, no matter how beloved or detested teaches the reader something. ~ Mickey Pearlman

It is practical, but that doesn't mean it's right. ~ Pittacus Lore

We all have our own rhythms to walk to. ~ Lauren Lola

That tank," Bucktooth pointed at the gas gauge on the dashboard of the decidedly unfredneck-like '65 Dodge Dart, "is almost empty. We ain't going much farther."
"Indeed it is." A solemn Phosphate agreed. "I suggest we stop the car and weigh our options."
"What options?" Professor Buckley asked. "Why do-that is- we've been traveling up and down this path for over an hour without seeing anyone or encountering anything. Even the doughnut shop cannot be relocated. In light of this, what options do we have?"
It was difficult to argue with the ex-history teacher's typically alarmist position. Brisbane's reliable old automobile had indeed been expending its remaining fuel supply in what seemed to be a hopeless effort to exit the unnamed dirt path. After leaving the doughnut shop and the blonde presidential descendant who worked there, they'd been unable to find DeMohrenschildt Lane again, or any other side street. ~ Donald Jeffries

Magic is all about words and believing. If you believe then anything is possible. ~ Jennifer Loiske