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Although our
productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected
pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the
world, no species of composition has been so much decried.
''And what are you reading, Miss -- -?'' ''Oh! it is only a
novel!'' replies the young lady; while she lays down her
book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. ''It is
only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda ''; or, in short, only
some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are
displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human
nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the
liveliest effusions of wit and humor, are conveyed to the
world in the best chosen language.
-- Jane Austen
1775-1817, British Novelist
We live in a
world ruled by fictions of every kind -- mass merchandising,
advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising,
the instant translation of science and technology into
popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling
of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the
preempting of any free or original imaginative response to
experience by the television screen. We live inside an
enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and
less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of
his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task
is to invent the reality.
-- J. G. Ballard
1930-, British Author
Novels are
longer than life.
-- Natalie Clifford Barney
1876-1972, American-born
French Author
Fiction is not
imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it
the form of reality. This is quite opposite to our own
natural tendency which is to anticipate reality by imagining
it, or to flee from it by idealizing it. That is why we
shall never inhabit true fiction; we are condemned to the
imaginary and nostalgia for the future.
-- Jean Baudrillard
French Postmodern
Philosopher, Writer
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The
traditional novel form continues to enlarge our experience
in those very areas where the wide-angle lens and the Cinema
screen tend to narrow it.
-- Daniel J. Boorstin
1914-, American Historian
Writing novels
preserves you in a state of innocence -- a lot passes you by
-- simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.
-- Anita Brookner
1938-, British Novelist, Art
Historian
Our interest's
on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the
tender murderer, the superstitious atheist.
-- Robert Browning
1812-1889, British Poet
If you write
fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There's a tremendous
corruptibility for the fiction writer because you're dealing
mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes,
they're the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it
or not.
-- Anthony Burgess
1917-1993, British Writer,
Critic
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