Let's stop reflexively comparing Chinese writers to Chinese writers, Indian writers to Indian writers, black writers to black writers. Let's focus on the writing itself: the characters, the language, the narrative style.
Celeste NgRead
I think one of the reasons that I like fiction versus nonfiction is that I myself can kind of disappear from the story.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Fiction allows the reader to escape reality and immerse themselves in different stories and perspectives.
In this quote, Celeste Ng expresses a preference for fiction over nonfiction because fiction provides the opportunity for readers to detach from reality and experience stories from various viewpoints. This ability to disappear from the narrative enables a deeper exploration of themes, emotions, and the human experience, making fiction a powerful medium for both escapism and reflection.
Themes
FictionStorytellingEscapismNarrativeArt
In practice
Example use cases
During a book club discussion about favorite genres.
More from Celeste Ng
All quotes βSpend enough time wrangling a toddler, and you get good at being kind but firm. Like your child, you must be doggedly single-minded when it matters.
Celeste NgRead
For me, any story I tackle begins with the human relationships and not the plot.
Celeste NgRead
It's so easy, as a writer, to get stuck in your own head, to live in the little worlds you create. To forget that there are people out there reading your work, people who may be deeply affected by what you do, that you are writing not just for yourself, but for them.
Celeste NgRead
What I remember about race relations in the 1990s is that you showed your awareness by saying you didn't see race, that you were colour-blind.
Celeste NgRead
In fiction you're not often writing about the typical; you are interested in outliers, the points of interest. Part of it comes from feeling I was the only Asian or person of colour... another part comes from my personality: I'm an introvert, and my usual survival mode in a large group is to stand by a wall and watch everybody.
Celeste NgRead
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Whenever I sit with a bowl of soup before me, listening to the murmur that penetrates like the distant song of an insect, lost in contemplation of the flavours to come, I feel as if I were being drawn into a trance.
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I like commas. I detest semi-colons - I don't think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn't need them, they were fly-specks on the page.
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I draw because words are too unpredictable. I draw because words are too limited. If you speak and write in English, or Spanish, or Chinese, or any other language, then only a certain percentage of human beings will get your meaning. But when you draw a picture everybody can understand it. If I draw a cartoon of a flower, then every man, woman, and child in the world can look at it and say, "That's a flower.
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A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.
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I am sure the next step will be the electronic image, and I hope I shall live to see it. I trust that the creative eye will continue to function, whatever technological innovations may develop.
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