Top 100 Quotes About Contemporary Fiction
#2. Contemporary fiction is the hardest for me because I am not really in the popular culture - I don't watch TV.
Gail Carson Levine
#3. Most contemporary fiction sucks. It's intellectually dishonest, often morally dishonest. It's cheap and easy. It pretends to be deep but is really quite shallow.
Dale Peck
#4. Aimee Parkison offers a distinct new voice to contemporary fiction. Her seductive stories explore childhood as a realm of sorrows, and reveal the afflictions of adults who emerge from this private geography.
Carol Anshaw
#5. I started reading contemporary fiction in college or right after college. It wasn't as if I was steeped in experimental minimalism when I was twelve or something. I was reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond.
Leni Zumas
#6. I spend my life writing fiction, so reading fiction isn't much of an escape. That's not always true, but I don't read much contemporary fiction.
Alan Furst
#7. I write contemporary fiction, and that is what my readers want to read.
Alex Flinn
#8. Before novels written by women were relegated to their own 'genre,' I was introduced to Jane Smiley by a dear professor who raised my awareness of what female authors were bringing to the table of contemporary fiction.
Emma McLaughlin
#9. In high school I was drawn to the study of literature, poetry Shakespeare, contemporary fiction, drama, you name it - I read it.
Frederick Lenz
#10. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.
[Q&A with Larry McCaffery, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1993, Vol. 13.2]
David Foster Wallace
#11. Most of my writer friends are women, and they're all extremely talented, so of course I think the state of contemporary fiction for women is pretty great. Which is to say there is a ton of amazing work out there. These women are writing hard. There's much to be said. We're on it, chief.
Jami Attenberg
#12. I think the anti-intellectualism of a lot of contemporary fiction is a kind of despairing of literature's ability to be anything more than perfectly bound blog posts or transcribed sitcoms.
Ben Lerner
#13. Barack Obama is an elegant and literate man with a cosmopolitan sense of the world. He is widely read in philosophy, literature, and history - as befits a former law professor - and he has shown time and again a surprising interest in contemporary fiction.
Teju Cole
#14. Anyway I read more contemporary poetry than contemporary fiction so my mind goes first to a kind of crass "conceptualism" that repeats vanguard gestures of the past minus the politics and historical context.
Ben Lerner
#15. Jax Cassidy is a brilliant new voice in contemporary fiction. Full of heat, seduction, and romance, her winning characters are sure to capture your heart and find a place on your keeper shelf.
Gemma Halliday
#16. I don't like to read contemporary fiction while writing - I need a sense of isolation, a kind of silence, and I don't want a jumble of other people's voices or visions getting in my way. Nineteenth-century voices don't create static in that silence.
Cynthia Ozick
#17. American Morons is the work of an original. Like Hitchcock or Ramsey Campbell, the style is precise, alert, and well-mannered, inviting us to enter Hirshberg's private world so that he may lock the door behind us. If there is anyone in contemporary fiction worth watching, it is Glen Hirshberg.
Dennis Etchison
#18. Too much contemporary fiction seems purposefully to address small things in small ways. And yet why not try for the all-inclusive, the gripping, for the audacious?
Darin Strauss
#19. Intensely moving but never sentimental, Academy Street is a profound meditation on what Faulkner called 'the human heart in conflict with itself'. In Tess Lohan, Mary Costello has created one of the most fully realized characters in contemporary fiction. What a marvel of a book.
Ron Rash
#20. I don't know what issues concerning identity have helped contemporary fiction evolve to what it is now. All I know is that the range of voices that are being heard and published is a lot more diverse than when I was coming up.
Jessica Hagedorn
#21. The writing you allude to is a form of dissent, but it's also expressive of the need to evolve beyond what is turgid and stale in contemporary fiction.
Rachel Cusk
#22. The main advantage of being a reviewer is that you read a lot. A lot of books get sent to you, and you have an amazing vantage point from which to observe what's going on in contemporary fiction - not only genre stuff, the whole spectrum.
Lev Grossman
#23. I turn to contemporary fiction seeking a shared awareness with the writer of the cultural moment we both occupy, its peculiar challenges.
Jennifer Egan
#24. Miz Ellen, what do you carry in that handbag of yours that has enough wallop to knock down a full-grown man? - Dan Landry
Jane Rainwater
#25. Obviously, I love to do both contemporary and historical fiction. When a hint of a story grabs me, I try to go with it to see where it will take me whatever the setting.
Katherine Paterson
#26. Then, the door opens and there he is; silhouetted in the hall light. Long hair, long legs, and a heartbeat in tune with my own.
Hunter S. Jones
#27. Every minute I decide not to kill you is a minute your life is saved. You owe me everything.
Christina L. Barr
#28. You know I'm always ready to indulge your fantasies.
Faith Sullivan
#29. "Faith is what's wrong with the world, Aidan. Or don't you follow the news?"
"That's not faith," he says. "That's the complete lack of it. If any one of those mass-genocidal idiots had faith, they wouldn't have the insane need to prove it to others."
Cyma Rizwaan Khan
#30. If the world explore all my dark fantasy, will change for the better.
Alexandar Tomov
#31. Chemistry's a tricky thing, and if I'm not feeling it, I'm not gonna pretend.
Faith Sullivan
#32. The destruction of something beautiful can appear so entertaining.
Thomas Sweeney
#34. Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk.
Henry Jenkins
#35. He'd sacrifice even his sanity for her. If it came down to it, he'd let her break his heart.
Because he loved her.
Becky Wade
#36. It's always difficult when people compare me unfavorably with other contemporary writers. It's much easier when they use examples from earlier eras of fiction. Because then I can say, Well, I may not be talented, but at least I'm not DEAD.
Tad Williams
#37. Don't be tricked by the verisimilitude into forgetting this is fiction!
Sha Li
#39. It'd been a long time since they'd been together, but as close as they were physically, they'd never been so far apart in every other way.
Jennifer Faye
#40. After all, she knows how painful it can be not to follow your heart and she knows about the obstacles and about loyalty and duty and about the countless kinds of love. If only Eve and Myles were freer to make the right choices, she thinks.
Claire Dyer
#41. I guess it was only fitting that to them PUNK was a four letter word. However, to people like Dylan and I-punk was our hearts-our souls. We grew up with a lot of uncertainties. To be a teenager isn't always pretty, and our music reflected that.
Brian Joyce
#42. I promise to keep my hands to myself. I'm too exhausted to make a move on you.
Faith Sullivan
#43. ...this place, this life, the one we were building together, even with all its cracks and bumps and imperfections, this life was the one I needed, the one I wanted, and that best of all, it was home.
Kimberly Stuart
#44. We're enveloped in pitch black. "Wait here," I whisper.
"Are you getting your ax?"
"Handcuffs."
"Kinky. But, okay, I'll try it.
Stephanie Perkins
#46. You feel pretty ,manly to me," I breathed out, all jelly-legged with half-mast eyes.
"And you feel like a woman worthy of a fight, Ms.Greene.
L.J. Shen
#47. Couples swayed and embraced to the beat as the singer's vocals soared above a group of confused teenagers and twenty-something's.
Brian Joyce
#48. Irrationality is part of everyday rationale
Elif Shafak
#49. The dusty library air is electric with secrets/ almost palpable in the thick quiet that bounces between/ Cal and those books and me
Stasia Ward Kehoe
#50. It is not often that I have two options to choose from. It is nice to be compelled towards something, otherwise one drifts through life unimpeded.
Bhanggi
Faiqa Mansab
#51. Talk to me. Say something, anything," he pleaded quietly as if he was trying to tame a wild animal.
"There's nothing to say."
He looked up and lowered his eyebrows on his eyes. "Why did you kiss me?
Stephanie Witter
#52. What were we, but kids with apartments and jobs anyway?
Brian Joyce
#53. When death becomes an escape, when it becomes attractive, the purpose of life is fulfilled. To teach one it's futility, it's worthlessness, that is the purpose of life. Incongruously, its value lies in having imparted that lesson.
Bhanggi
Faiqa Mansab
#54. Never run upstairs when someone's chasing you. Don't try to quick-draw a man who already has his gun out. Never light a match in the dark in a strange building. Half of staying safe is just keeping your head and being prudent.
Mark Zero
#55. I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.
Barbara Kingsolver
#56. I'm going to turn my life around. Make a complete three sixty."
"Don't you mean one eighty?" he corrected. "If you do that, you'll end up right back where you started."
"Maybe. But at least I'll have a chance of coming out of it a different person - a better version of me.
Megan Duke
#57. Sometimes a beautiful woman had to do nothing more than smile to make you forget about any ugliness.
Bart Hopkins
#58. I'm going to make love to you, Lanie. I'm not your first, but I will be the last.
Flora Roberts
#59. I'm now requesting you refrain from calling me this early in the morning, before I've had a chance to steel my defenses against hearing you utter the word 'lizard.'"
-- spoken by Dr. Jeri Asheer... to Chris Dixon.
Richard Finney
#60. What we've done is make the categories of science fiction and fantasy larger, freer, and more inclusive than any other genre of contemporary literature. We have room for everybody, and we are extraordinarily open to genuine experimentation.
Orson Scott Card
#61. Most people surrendered fairy tale hopes in exchange for cookie cutter lives
Roy L. Pickering Jr.
#62. Ari's words felt like drops of sunlight upon my skin, and my frame was burning with longing.
Petra March
#63. His fierce appreciation of female beauty, the unrelenting desire he felt for their company, the pleasure he both derived and sought to give, had led him in and out of quite a few bedroom doors.
Roy L. Pickering Jr.
#64. He wasn't kissing me like I was going to break; he was kissing me like he thought he would break without this kiss.
Christie Cote
#65. It feels like the city is telling secrets down here, privy only to those who think to listen.
Gayle Forman
#66. I guess what's most important is that we chose to live with our hearts open and to let our experiences show us the way towards our brightest days.
Brian Joyce
#67. He is who he is, but it's not enough for me. I want more. I don't want him for just a night. I want him beside me every night.
Faith Sullivan
#68. Identity was partly heritage, partly upbringing, but mostly the choices you make in life."
Patricia Briggs.
Demetra Angelis Foustanellas
#69. I find it rather depressing that the people you love most in this world can also be the same exact people you hate with fervor. But it can happen, trust me.
It was the f***ing story of my life.
Christina Channelle
#70. Hush, little students, we'll say the word,
Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird.
And if that mockingbird won't sing,
Mama's gonna write down everything.
And so that book won't look the same,
Mama's gonna add a brand-new name.
Daisy Whitney
#71. Winter passed, spring arrived, hope faded.
I.J. Sarfeh
#72. Sometimes all you could do for the suffering was to make sure they knew someone was suffering right there with them. Someone who had also felt stricken, and smitten, and afflicted.
Beth Moore
#74. The past is always with us. It echoes through every living moment, giving it depth and meaning beyond itself. Sometimes the past is so powerful, those echoes threaten to overwhelm the present.
Trish Feehan
#75. And although he recognized that tenderness was not the same as passion, and certainly not equivalent to love, for now it seemed to him a suitable substitute.
Roy L. Pickering Jr.
#76. You know-portraits are odd things." "How do you figure?" I asked. "Well at the time, that portrait told the whole story. It told the truth. We were a family-a happy family. Now that same portrait just looks like a lie.
Brian Joyce
#77. Is a First Lady truly a necessity? Shouldn't each wife of a president have a right to choose to accept the position or not?
Venita Ellick
#78. Society gets by from the help of its citizens.
Brian Joyce
#79. I don't think I've ever referred to any girl I dated as my girlfriend. I think that would freak me out. Even the girl that I dated for two years in college I don't think I ever referred to her as my girlfriend."
"How would you introduce her?" I asked.
"I'm just going to say her name," he said.
Daniel Amory
#80. Maybe that's why I was so afraid of Sasha's love. With him comes the remembering part that I was so good at forgetting.
~Piper - 'Breathe Me
Alexia Purdy
#81. You know there's this gaping space between us, and if I leaned forward I'd grab Dex's shirt without ever touching him. You know there's a three-inch-thick glass wall separating us.
Now we know, too.
Rebecca Berto
#82. I uttered the wisest thing that you must say to an angry woman - "I'm sorry.
Mita Jain
#83. All writers are manipulative liars.
Jack O. Savage, The Poet
Hunter S. Jones
#84. He's an idiot for letting you walk away in that dress tonight.
Kelly Stevenson
#85. If you're around someone who makes you feel good, you have to go for it. Don't hold back.
Faith Sullivan
#86. There were many tomorrows to be lived through his children. He could only hope that they would face them more courageously than he had, that his mistakes would serve as warning signs rather than crutches to lean on.
Roy L. Pickering Jr.
#87. If music were wind, I would live in a hurricane.
Jessica Bell
#88. He made me feel wanted - good about myself, even. Like he immediately accepted me for me, no questions asked.
Faith Sullivan
#89. ... The use of your gift for good is your responsibility. You must decide for yourself.
Thomas Sweeney
#90. When I was a teenager, I was a voracious reader of crime fiction, but only contemporary books.
Michael Connelly
#91. Prose of the World is an enormously compelling and vivid study. The result is an ambitious, timely, and eloquent account of the relationship between early-twentieth-century fiction and the contemporary global novel in English.
Rebecca L. Walkowitz
#92. I'd love to wake up next to you in this room, in this bed, every day.
Faith Sullivan
#93. Most people get to live in a house but a writer has to live in the world.
Faye Hollins-Moore
#94. In times such as these, life often begs us to seek answers when in reality there are only questions available.
Brian Joyce
#95. I congratulate you on your success stealing the painting.
Mark Zero
#96. Have sex with Adam? I'd rather grab a defibrillator paddle and burn the other side of my face.
Faith Sullivan
#97. On occasion we stumble upon what seems to be a truth. Compared to the surrounding blackness, it sparkles and dazzles our eyes. But are these actually truths? Are our eyes really feasting upon light? Or just patches of grey?
Roy L. Pickering Jr.
#98. That night, he laid in his bed thinking about all the possibilities. They came like waves in his mind. At first they came slow, then gradually built up speed, cresting into full on dreams, until finally, they broke onto the shore with all of their reality. First dreams, then nightmares.
Brian Joyce
#99. Elevation Book Publishing drives each book to their highest peak and afford authors the opportunity to rise to their full potential. We create thriving partnerships.
Rhonda Wilson
#100. Though Marcus' essay extends over 13 pages of small text, at its core is a very simple premise: Contemporary American fiction has lost its innovative edge and its interest in language as art, and Jonathan Franzen is largely, if not exclusively, to blame.
Jess Row
