Fiction Power Quotes

Mark Helprin and Lawrence Durrell, both of whom write fat and florid novels that appall me now but opened my eyes to the power of fiction when I was in my 20s.

I think that fiction has a certain power.

Well-written novels make you more empathetic towards other people. You can identify with someone who isn't you. You can change your identity. A 14-year-old boy can become Anna Karenina. It is a miracle.

There are writers who draw immediate attention to the fact that it's fiction. And I like some of that, but it doesn't really have the power.

That's the power of fiction, that it can take the collective and make it personal.

Most literary critics agree that fiction cannot be reduced to mere falsehood. Well-crafted protagonists come to life, pornography causes orgasms, and the pretense that life is what we want it to be may conceivably bring about the desired condition. Hence religious parables, socialist realism, Nazi propaganda. And if this story likewise crawls with reactionary supernaturalism, that might be because its author longs to see letters scuttling across ceilings, cautiously beginning to reify themselves into angels. For if they could only do that, then why not us?

The premiere of Lynne Ramsay's film of 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' at the Cannes film festival provides an apt juncture at which to celebrate the miraculous power - not of film but of fiction. Lo, I have created a monster.

Fiction is more dangerous than nonfiction because it can seduce better. I think we all know this, know that deeper truths can be approached in fiction than in fact. There are risks for the reader, because after reading certain books you find you have changed irreversibly. There are risks for writers: in China, now, and Ethiopia and other countries right now, writers face real persecution.

I read 'Jaws' and 'The Godfather' back to back one summer when I was 14 and was suddenly aware of how powerful fiction could be.

The power of historical fiction for bad and for good can be immense in shaping consciousness of the past.

My books deliberately provide no answers or messages. I'm drilled in the habit of objectivity and also aware that the steady drip of fiction has more power than facts to shape opinion, so I handle it with caution.

Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you’ve never been. Once you’ve visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.

Wondrous strong are the spells of fiction.