#fiction

[M]ay not literature (and, in particular, fiction) be considered a desperate and permanently thwarted effort to produce a unique form of expression? Something like a cry, perhaps, a cry that, somehow, inexplicably contains all the millions of words that have ever existed, anywhere, in any age. In contrast with the spoken word and its classifying function, the purpose of writing seems, rather, to be a quest for the egg, the seed, nothing more. ↗

— J.M.G. Le Clézio

#function #literature #purpose #words #age

Shortly before school started, I moved into a studio apartment on a quiet street near the bustle of the downtown in one of the most self-conscious bends of the world. The “Gold Coast” was a neighborhood that stretched five blocks along the lake in a sliver of land just south of Lincoln Park and north of River North. The streets were like fine necklaces and strung together were the brownstone houses and tall condominiums and tiny mansions like pearls, and when the day broke and the sun faded away, their lights burned like jewels shining gaudily in the night. The world’s most elegant bazaar, Michigan Avenue, jutted out from its eastern tip near The Drake Hotel and the timeless blue-green waters of Lake Michigan pressed its shores. The fractious make-up of the people that inhabited it, the flat squareness of its parks and the hint of the lake at the ends of its tree-lined streets squeezed together a domesticated cesspool of age and wealth and standing. It was a place one could readily dress up for an expensive dinner at one of the fashionable restaurants or have a drink miles high in the lounge of the looming John Hancock Building and five minutes later be out walking on the beach with pants cuffed and feet in the cool water at the lake’s edge. ↗

— Daniel Amory

#city #contemporary-fiction #contemporary-literature #downtown #lake

His mind, grooved through the uncounted ages to ultimate despair, soared up insanely. His legs and arms glistened like tongues of living fire as they writhed and twisted in the light that blazed from the portholes. His mouth, a gash in his caricature of a human head, slavered a white frost that floated away in little frozen globules. ↗

— A.E Van Vogt

#science-fiction #voyage-of-the-space-beagle #age

We come together, we create our families, we chose our mates out of the desire to form a life together. Love takes many forms, wears many faces, but when it's real, when it touches your heart, you will know it and--with hope--embrace it. Love is stronger than hate, love is stronger than anger. Love is stronger than all artificial divisions that exist n our world. ↗

— Yasmine Galenorn

#demons #fae #faeries #love #paranormal

Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth. ↗

— Khaled Hosseini

#books #deception #fiction #lies #novels

There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#fiction #on-fiction #talent #value #vocation

Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#art #disaster #fiction #films #oldest

Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream. ↗

— John Cheever

#fiction #inspirational #on-fiction #writing #art

The woman looked out at the madness of the world and dared to hope. Her eyes were burning coals of stars. ↗

— Rivera Sun

#hope #inspirational #mothers #stars #strength

Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the art that speaks it most unmistakably, most directly, most variously, most fully, is fiction; in particular, the novel. ↗

— Eudora Welty

#fiction #novels #writing #art