Life, raw life, the kind we lead every day, whether it leads us into the past or the future, has the curious property of not seeming real . We have a need, however illusive, for a life that is more real than life. It lies in the imagination. Fiction ...
Critics and academics have been trying for forty years to bury the greatest work of imaginative fiction in English. They ignore it, they condescend to it, they stand in large groups with their backs to it - because they're afraid of it. They're afrai...
I had lines inside me, a string of guiding lights. I had language. Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination. I had been damaged, and a very important part of me had been destroyed - that ...
Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so ...
Mangled heroes from both sides of the nameless conflict lay scattered in comical disregard. Valiant and dignified death poses embody a fiction found in the epic poems of minstrels and bards; fanciful reflections lacking merit in warfare. Athen briefl...
Wrath: look at how their folklore portrays our species. There's Dracula for Christ's sake, an evil bloodsucker who preys on the defenseless. There's piss-poor B movies and porn. And don't get me started on the whole Halloween thing. Plastic fangs. Bl...
The mind cannot fall asleep as long as it watches itself. Only when the mind moves unwatched and becomes absorbed in images that tug it as it were to one side does self-consciousness dissolve and sleep with its healing, brilliantly detailed fictions ...
The claim at the heart of this book has been carefully researched by several generations of scholars and is orthodox in academic circles, if not beyond. Christians under the Roman Empire were neither constantly persecuted nor martyred in huge numbers...
What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to exper...
Besides, Fi was convinced that instinct could determine a body's literary needs, just as physical cravings pointed to dietary shortfalls. She'd experienced it herself more than once among the library's dense shelves; not knowing what she should read ...
My great-great grandfather and I were best of friends, although we never met. Fire and shipwreck orphan us – 140 years apart. We escape to imagination to survive our fate. There, midst flights of whimsy we find one another. Companionship quells our...
Can you not see, […] that fairy tales in their essence are quite solid and straightforward; but that this everlasting fiction about modern life is in its nature essentially incredible? Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is...
With favoring winds, o'er sunlit seas, We sailed for the Hesperides, The land where golden apples grow; But that, ah! that was long ago. How far, since then, the ocean streams Have swept us from that land of dreams, That land of fiction and of truth,...
Almásy: Let me tell you about winds. There is a, a whirlwind from southern Morrocco, the aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. And there is the... the ghibli, from Tunis... Katharine Clifton: [giggling] The "ghibli"? Almá...
Vincent: And you know what they call a... a... a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris? Jules: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with cheese? Vincent: No man, they got the metric system. They wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is. Jules:...
[cleaning their bloody hands] Jules: Fuck, nigga, what the fuck did you do to his towel? Vincent: I was dryin' my hands. Jules: You're supposed to wash 'em first! Vincent: You watched me wash 'em. Jules: I watched you get 'em wet. Vincent: I was wash...
Mia: Vincent, do you still want to hear my Fox Force Five joke? Vincent: Sure, but I think I'm still a little too petrified to laugh. Mia: No, you wont laugh, 'cus it's not funny. But if you still wanna hear it, I'll tell it. Vincent: I can't wait. M...
Harold Crick: How are you? Ana Pascal: I'm lousy. I'm being audited. Harold Crick: Of course. Ana Pascal: By a real creep too. Harold Crick: I think I owe you an apology. Ana Pascal: Really? Harold Crick: IRS agents, we're given rigorous aptitude tes...
Kay Eiffel: What's this? Penny Escher: It's literature on the nicotine patch. Kay Eiffel: I don't need a nicotine patch, Penny. I smoke cigarettes. Penny Escher: Well, it may help. Kay Eiffel: May help? Help what? Help what, Penny? Help write a novel...
Penny Escher: I'm Penny Escher. I'm the assistant your publishers hired. Kay Eiffel: The spy. Penny Escher: The assistant. I provide the same services as a secretary. Kay Eiffel: I don't need a secretary. Penny Escher: Then I will have to find some o...
Harold Crick: What do these questions have to do with anything? Professor Jules Hilbert: Nothing. The only way to find out what story you're in is to determine what stories you're not in. Odd as it may seem, I've just ruled out half of Greek literatu...
