#literature

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

#how-fiction-informs-reality #purpose #experience

Faith is a question of eyesight; even the blind can see that. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#books #dejan-stojanovic #eyesight #faith #literature

Literature for me was a magnificent destiny for which I was not yet fully prepared. 76 ↗

— Anita Brookner

#reading #family

The pale organisms of literary heroes feeding under the author's supervision swell gradually with the reader's lifeblood; so that the genius of a writer consists in giving them the faculty to adapt themselves to that - not very appetizing - food and thrive on it, sometimes for centuries. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#reader #writer #writing #food

Nobility is not only in forgiveness. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #forgivness #literature #literature-quotes #nobility

Genuine bravery for a writer.... It is about calmly speaking the truth when everyone else is silenced, when the truth cannot be expressed. It is about speaking out with a different voice, risking the wrath of the state and offending everyone, for the sake of the truth, and the writer’s conscience. ↗

— Murong Xuecun

#literature #freedom

Actually, I am a coward. I say only what is safe to say, and I criticise only what is permissable to criticise. ↗

— Murong Xuecun

#literature #freedom

It is difficult to call myself a writer, even when I stand at a podium to receive a prize, I feel uncomfortable calling myself a writer—I am merely a word criminal. ↗

— Murong Xuecun

#literature #freedom

Because at this time, in this place, Chinese writing exhibits symptoms of a mental disorder. ↗

— Murong Xuecun

#freedom-of-speech #freedom

This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents--were they the stuff of Literature? At best, they might aspire to the condition of onlookers and bystanders, part of a social backdrop against which real, true, important things could happen. Like what? The things Literature was about: Love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God. ↗

— Julian Barnes

#fiction #god #life #literature #love