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
Short fiction and the novel, nonfiction and fiction, electronic texts and books - these are not opposites. One need not destroy the other to survive.
Interpretation
Different genres of writing can coexist and complement each other without competition.
In this quote, Celeste Ng emphasizes the idea that various forms of writing, such as fiction and nonfiction, as well as traditional books and electronic texts, are not opposing forces but can coexist harmoniously. She suggests that the existence of one genre does not negate the value or survival of another; instead, they can enrich the literary landscape together, showcasing the diversity and richness of storytelling.
In practice
This quote can be used during a panel discussion on the future of literature and digital media.
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.
Spend 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.
For me, any story I tackle begins with the human relationships and not the plot.
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.
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.
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.
For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written β heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world.
But everything of value about me is in my books.
I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views.
America is a nation of liars, and for that reason science fiction has a special claim to be our national literature, as the art form best adapted to telling the lies we like to hear and to pretend we believe.
I am trying to make clear through my writing something which I believe: that biography- history in general- can be literature in the deepest and highest sense of that term.
In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.
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