A Quote by Ben Okri

We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.

Ben Okri

Quote Topics

Beings Definition Description Fallen Fiction Human Human Being Human Beings Humanity Mean Naturalism Too Very Very Mean

Quote Author

Ben Okri
Nigerian - Novelist
Born: March 15, 1959

I'm not able to completely escape naturalism. It's very difficult to escape from naturalism without being too dry. That's what I try to do in my cinema - escape naturalism and do films that are, at the same time, realistic but have a lot of fantasy. It's very difficult in cinema to get away from what life is about, from real life. The way the actors work has to be realistic - you can't do Baroque acting - so it's very complicated. And, we're human beings, so we're not perfect. I'm trying to do something different.

Philippe Garrel

Fiction is about human beings, first and foremost. (It's not impossible to write fiction with no human protagonists, but it's very hard to keep the reader interested ...)

Charles Stross

What does it mean to be human, and what is at the human heart, and is there a soul, or is that all there is? Can an artificial being be intelligent? Is 'intelligent' the definition of humanity, or is it something deeper?

Ronald D. Moore

Naturalism says that we were not put here for any purpose. But that doesn't mean there isn't such thing as purpose. It just means that purpose isn't imposed from outside. We human beings have the creative ability to give our lives purposes and meanings.

Sean M. Carroll

I was deeply interested in conveying what is a deeply felt conviction of my own. This is simply to suggest that human beings must involve themselves in the anguish of other human beings. This, I submit to you, is not a political thesis at all. It is simply an expression of what I would hope might be ultimately a simple humanity for humanity's sake.

Rod Serling

Pornography is essentially reductive, an exercise in the nothing-but mode, a depersonalizing of the human beings involved, a showing-up of human lust as nothing but an affair of the genitals.

Storm Jameson

I think that if there's one key insight science can bring to fiction, it's that fiction - the study of the human condition - needs to broaden its definition of the human condition. Because the human condition isn't immutable and doomed to remain uniform forever.

Charles Stross

Evolution brings human beings. Human beings, through a long and painful process, bring humanity.

Dan Simmons

There's something in human beings, not all human beings, that is ready for the change in consciousness. It needs to happen now if humanity is not to destroy itself and the planet.

Eckhart Tolle

The prescription of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how we should treat human beings.

Peter Singer

As all human beings are, in my view, creatures of God's design, we must respect all other human beings. That does not mean I have to agree with their choices or agree with their opinions, but indeed I respect them as human beings.

Stockwell Day

As long as anyone anywhere is being made to feel less human, our very definition of humanity is at stake, and we are all vulnerable.

Kerry Washington

Feelings, too, are facts. Emotion is a fact. Human experience is a fact. It is often possible to gain more real insight into human beings and their motivation by reading great fiction than by personal acquaintance.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Jesus' power is the power of human wholeness that ultimately opens, invites and enables human beings to step beyond defense lines where incomplete humanity always hides in order to experience full humanity.

John Shelby Spong

It would be impossible to accept naturalism itself if we really and consistently believed naturalism. For naturalism is a system of thought. But for naturalism all thoughts are mere events with irrational causes. It is, to me at any rate, impossible to regard the thoughts which make up naturalism in that way and, at the same time, regard them as a real insight into external reality...If it is true, then we can know no truths. It cuts its own throat.