Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.
Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.
Some major writers have a huge impact like Ayn Rand who to my mind is a lousy fiction writer because her writing has no compassion and virtually no humor. She has a philosophical and economical message that she is passing off as fiction but it really isn't fiction at all.
The only people who live in a post-black world are four people who live in a little white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. The idea that America is post-racial or post-black because a man I admire Barack Obama is president of the United States is a joke. And I hope no one will even wonder about this crazy fiction again.
With fiction you can talk about plot character and narrative whereas a poem brings home the fact that everything that happens in a work of literature happens in terms of language. And this is daunting stuff to deal with.
Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.
The general consensus among historians among the ones who can handle the fact that 'Lincoln' is in fact historical fiction is that we demonstrate enormous fidelity to history and that beyond that we've actually contributed a line of thinking about Lincoln's presidency that's somewhat original.
My mother whom I love dearly has continually revised my life story within the context of a complicated family history that includes more than the usual share of divorce step-children dysfunction and obfuscation. I've spent most of my adult life attempting to deconstruct that history and separate fact from fiction.
Irish fiction is full of secrets guilty pasts divided identities. It is no wonder that there is such a rich tradition of Gothic writing in a nation so haunted by history.
For one who reads there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived for fiction biography and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world in all periods of time.