A Quote by Teju Cole
At the emergence of the modern novel with Rabelais and Cervantes, all kinds of things were possible in a long-form prose work. Within a couple of hundred years, most of those possibilities were abandoned in favor of a text that efficiently transmitted sentiments.
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Modern critics, who refuse to let a plain thing alone, have now started a theory that Cervantes's work is a vast piece of "symbolism." If so, Cervantes didn't know it himself and nobody thought of it for three hundred years. He meant it as a satire upon the silly romances of chivalry.
The novel has always been a contradictory form. Here is a long form narrative mainly read originally by consumers who were only newly literate or limited in their literacy. The novel ranked below poetry, essay and history in prestige for a long time.
I like to try to capture places that a lot of people went to or have a deep emotional connection to. Malls, abandoned speedways, abandoned theme parks. To me, those are most interesting kinds of things to capture.
There were probably, what, 300 science-fiction members in the SFWA, of whom probably a hundred were active members in the sense that they were selling something every year, or every couple years.
In one hundred years time people will look back and think 'these people were really worried about the environment, they were looking at things to do with global warming, and this is why they were making work about these issues'.
... a novel survives because of its basic truthfulness, its having within it something general and universal, and a quality of imaginative perception which applies just as much now as it did in the fifty or hundred or two hundred years since the novel came to life.
We must, however, note that what are usually called the high religions made their appearance within about twenty-five hundred years - most of them within fifteen hundred years.
I think a very good movie director makes films to entertain people, but not to be considered like they were Cervantes, you know? One of the biggest problems now, with all the festivals and everything, is a confusion between the quality and the beauty and the highness of things. A film is a film. It's something to entertain you a couple hours. Not to be considered as if it were Shakespeare.
Look how far the human race has come in terms of air and space travel in the last hundred years. So in the next couple of thousand years, you've got to believe that we're going to be able to do all kinds of amazing things.
The mistake that people made around 2000 with the emergence of the web was that they thought that people would not read long-form on a screen. Following from that idea, they quit doing long-form on screens. It got shorter and shorter, and then came cats toying with flowers and all of those clichés, but it was wrong. People will read long-form on a device if they want to read long-form.
We essentially spent our college years together [with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg], so those were the kind of lasting friendships and the bond you form during those years, and those friendships last a really long time.
I don't even know if it's possible, but if it were, I'd like to make those kinds of old movies where the women were articulate and intelligent and flawed and witty.
Those who think through possible outcomes with discipline, forge connections, in so doing, to other cosmi in which those outcomes are more than mere possibilities. Such a consciousness is measurably, quantitatively different from one that has not undertaken the same work and so, yes, is able to make correct decisions in an Emergence where an untrained mind would be of little use.
Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.
The Nehru years were rather very peaceful years. A lot happened in those years: dams were built, five-year plans were made, Chandigarh was built in front of my eyes. Those were the years I grew up in.
I've already written 300 space poems. But I look upon my ultimate form as being a poetic prose. When you read it, it appears to be prose, but within the prose you have embedded the techniques of poetry.
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