I don't think the world will destroy itself in a nuclear cataclysm. On the contrary, we have the capacity to save ourselves and save the planet, and we will use it.
Isabel AllendeRead
you can tell the deepest truths with the lies of fiction
Interpretation
Fiction can convey profound truths that may be difficult to express through reality.
Isabel Allende suggests that through the art of storytelling and fiction, one can explore and reveal the deeper truths about human nature and the world. Fictional narratives allow for an emotional resonance that can sometimes express complex realities more effectively than straightforward facts, providing insights into the human experience that resonate on a deeper level.
In practice
A writer might use this quote to introduce their novel at a book signing, emphasizing the power of fiction.
I don't think the world will destroy itself in a nuclear cataclysm. On the contrary, we have the capacity to save ourselves and save the planet, and we will use it.
My mother is a great artist, but she always treated her paintings like minor postcards. Had she pursued it, she would have been a great artist. Instead, she looked down on her art.
I never try to convey a message, I just want to tell a story. Why that story in particular? I have no idea, but I have learned to surrender to the muse. I become obsessed with a theme or with certain stories; they haunt me for years, and finally, I write them.
My life is about ups and downs, great joys and great losses.
I'm interested in people who have to overcome obstacles, people who are not sheltered by the umbrella of the establishment, marginals.
I'm a writer. In Latin America, they say I'm a Latin-American writer because I also write in Spanish and my books are translated, but I am an American citizen and my books are published here, so I'm also an American writer.
Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.
Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader's imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover, I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons, I want there to be dragons inside the book. Proper labeling. Ethical labeling. I don't want to open up my cornflakes and find that they're full of pebbles... You need to respect the reader enough not to call it something it isn't.
I think that what's unique about sci-fi - at least from the view of a lot of Chinese writers - is that sci-fi is least-rooted in the particular culture that they're writing from.
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.
What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those moments of transcendence when we exclaim 'You know exactly what I mean!' depend for much of their force on the anonymous character of the intimacy between writer and reader.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.