Top 1200 Contemporary Fiction Quotes & Sayings - Page 16

I'm not disciplined in terms of scheduling. I work best late at night, but I can't do that when I'm on a TV show - our hours are roughly 10-6:30, so I have to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. So I'll sometimes write fiction for an hour or two in the evenings, or several hours on the weekend afternoons - unless I'm actively writing a script for the show I'm working on, in which case there's no time to write fiction at all.

But I don't think that poetry is a good, to use a contemporary word, venue, for current events.

I've never been at odds with the world of contemporary artists. If there is any animosity, it's one-sided.

In the '80s, to get a contemporary Scot who was smart, sexy and funny was very unusual.

I didn't wait around for my parents' opinion about my venture out into contemporary music.

The alliance in Jammu and Kashmir is one of the most important developments on the contemporary political scene.

There are loads of sociopolitical, racial, class and future-planet situations that really interest me, but I'm not really interested in making a film about them in a film that feels like reality because people view that in a different way. I like using science fiction to talk about subjects through the veneer of science fiction.

I probably take a pretty traditional view about hell. I'm not very contemporary in terms of that.

There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction...For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.

There are certain kinds of people who write science fiction. I think a lot of us married late. A lot of us are mama's boys. I lived at home until I was 27. But most of the writers I know in any field, especially science fiction, grew up late. They're so interested in doing what they do and in their science, they don't think about other things.

If you give a writer a pile of blank paper and say you can write anything you like on any subject you want at any length you want, you will probably never get anything at all, whereas if you have 900 words to write, and it's fiction that is somehow op-ed fiction, and it needs to tie in with Halloween . . . okay, those are my constraints, that's where I now need to start building something.

The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work.

I love science fiction but I don't like fantastic [cinema]. For example, if you have a magical ring and you can explode the world with it. What are we talking about? You know, it's not interesting. I don't like Lord of the Rings. Even Star Wars, for me, I don't understand this kind of story. But Alien, because the rules of the game are very precise, it could happen. I love science fiction. I have an idea about robots in the future.

My mother was a classical pianist and my stepfather was an industrialist who was passionate about composing contemporary music.

I do modern jazz and contemporary combined. I like to feel strong, flexible, and so there is stretching involved.

During my career I've enjoyed re-invigorating and contextualizing classic characters that are relatable to contemporary audiences.

Remember, science fiction's always been the kind of first level alert to think about things to come. It's easier for an audience to take warnings from sci-fi without feeling that we're preaching to them. Every science fiction movie I have ever seen, any one that's worth its weight in celluloid, warns us about things that ultimately come true.

Steven Pinker says, the invention of printing and the widespread appearance of fiction - this taught empathy. If you read a novel, you're in someone else's head, in three, five different people's heads. Suddenly, the principle of "Don't do anything to anyone that you wouldn't want done to you" becomes real in people's minds. That's a fantastic achievement if fiction is indeed partly responsible for it. That's a great thing to be a part of. In the end, then, I don't know if writers have legislated, but they have civilized.

If I had to describe my sense of humor, I would say it's contemporary wit, you know what I'm saying?

Honestly, I haven't the time to read contemporary writers. I know this is awful, but in the main it is true.

I have so many favourite science fiction films. I would say 'Alien' and 'Aliens' are two of my favourite sci-fi films. Also 'Children of Men' would be one of my favourite science fiction films. I love the original 'Solaris' and the remake. And even though it wasn't a film, the series 'Battlestar Galactica' was one of my favourite TV shows.

There are a number of contemporary playwrights whom I admire enormously, but that's not at all the same thing as being influenced.

There are contemporary artists that I hate with all my heart. These are provocateurs that are without feeling. Where is the real emotion?

Even the contemporary horror authors who have seriously influenced me are a disparate bunch.

There is nothing more trite than a period room imposed on a contemporary setting.

The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded upon the spirituality of work.

I don't believe that fiction is dead. I know there are some people who believe that it's an outdated art form, and that to express truth today you need to work in different forms, to write books where it's perhaps not clear what's fiction and what's memoir. I have nothing against those books and love many of them very much. But we have enough space for everyone, traditional realists and hybrid writers, and experimental writers all.

Pearl Harbor is strenuously respectful of contemporary sensitivities, sometimes at the cost of accuracy.

I tell myself that I created the wardrobe of the contemporary woman, that I participated in the transformation of my times.

Because contemporary paganism is essentially so new, its underlying ethical structure is not particularly sophisticated.

I think there are all kinds of intrusions into private rights that make use of contemporary technology.

When fashion sweeps in, artists follow suit. I think this is the malady of contemporary art.

I think the least important thing about science fiction for me is its predictive capacity. Its record for being accurately predictive is really, really poor! If you look at the whole history of science fiction, what people have said is going to happen, what writers have said is going to happen, and what actually happened - it's terrible.

The most prevalent poetic representation of contemporary experience is the mimesis of disorientation by non sequitor.

There are few subjects that match the social significance of women's education in the contemporary world.

Contemporary science is based on the philosophy of materialism, which claims that all reality is material or physical.

I don't think humanity just replays history, but we are the same people our ancestors were, and our descendants are going to face a lot of the same situations we do. It's instructive to imagine how they would react, with different technologies on different worlds. That's why I write science fiction -- even though the term 'science fiction' excites disdain in certain persons.

To be a science fiction writer you must be interested in the future and you must feel that the future will be different and hopefully better than the present. Although I know that most - that many science fiction writings have been anti-utopias. And the reason for that is that it's much easier and more exciting to write about a really nasty future than a - placid, peaceful one.

I think that the role of curating an exhibition is to reanimate history and make it relevant to a contemporary viewer.

It's difficult to make movies. For me it was easier, as a refugee in Switzerland, to make documentary films, because I didn't need a lot of money for it. The way I tell my story or my opinion would be very similar in both fiction and documentary forms. But I found I could speak more effectively to convey this brutal reality through documentary than I could through fiction.

Commercials are so contemporary and up to date that when you're involved in that visual world, you can't really go backwards.

Juilliard gave me the ability to go and do classical, contemporary, comedy, drama, everything.

With a lot of contemporary musicals, the songs are like a calling card: the action stops for them.

Not that many people, even contemporary writers, write about right now.

...Venice has been the living future of contemporary American history since its inception.

The lessons of the past are ignored and obliterated in a contemporary antagonism known as the generation gap.

Because of the structure of the contemporary American party system, every president is polarizing.

When we talk about 9/11 and 26/11 - which is the shorthand for the Mumbai attacks in 2008 - we're talking about the most successful terrorist attacks in history. When you start trying to study the most successful event of its kind, it actually doesn't make for great fiction because there isn't the kind of failure in it that fiction thrives on.

I sometimes think the contemporary white American is more culturally deprived than the Indian.

During my career I’ve enjoyed re-invigorating and contextualizing classic characters that are relatable to contemporary audiences.

Profit and bottom line, the contemporary mantra, eliminates the very source of architectural expression.

In a way, being a Mormon prepares you to deal with science fiction, because we live simultaneously in two very different cultures. The result is that we all know what it's like to be strangers in a strange land. It's not just a coincidence that there are so many effective Mormon science fiction writers. We don't regard being an alien as an alien experience. But it also means that we're not surprised when people don't understand what we're saying or what we think.

While the emphasis on effects became a catastrophe for science fiction, it was a relief for the capitalist culture of which 'Star Wars' became a symbol. Late capitalism can't produce many new ideas any more, but it can reliably deliver technological upgrades. But 'Star Wars' didn't really belong to the science fiction genre any way.

It's hard to find actors that don't feel contemporary when you put them in a period piece.

Contemporary Democrats are people who can't stand the idea that someone, somewhere is experiencing good news.

I've come to realize that the contemporary creative culture is not generating the best possible outcome.

The problem with contemporary art is that no one bothers to do the research necessary to give people what they want.

All great contemporary artists, schooled or not, are essentially self-taught and are de-skilling like crazy.

That 'adult contemporary' status nearly killed me... C'mon, I'm not a teenager, but I'm not a dinosaur either.

I see contemporary violence as a kind of sardonic response to the promise of consumer fulfilment in America.