“Reality is much more absurd and complex than any fiction.”
Yan Lianke (1958) Chinese novelist and satirist
"China on China, Culture for Billions" Documentary
“Do not, under any circumstances belittle a works of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.”
— Azar Nafisi, book Reading Lolita in Tehran
Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)
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Azar Nafisi28
Iranaian academic and writer 1955Related quotes
“Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true;
Real becomes not-real when the unreal's real.”
Cao Xueqin book Dream of the Red Chamber
Jia zuo zhen shi zhen yi jia,
Wu wei you chu you huan wu.
Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (c. 1760), Chapter 5
“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
“Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.”
Ralph Ellison book Shadow and Act
Shadow and Act (New York: Random House, 1964), Introduction, p. xix; in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 56.
“I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction.”
Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist
Augusto Boal (1931–2009) Brazilian writer
Games for Actors and non-Actors (1992)
Context: In truth the Theatre of the Oppressed has no end, because everything which happens in it must extend into life…. The Theatre of the Oppressed is located precisely on the frontier between fiction and reality – and this border must be crossed. If the show starts in fiction, its objective is to become integrated into reality, into life. Now in 1992, when so many certainties have become so many doubts, when so many dreams have withered on exposure to sunlight, and so many hopes have become as many deceptions – now that we are living through times and situations of great perplexity, full of doubts and uncertainties, now more than ever I believe it is time for a theatre which, at its best, will ask the right questions at the right times. Let us be democratic and ask our audiences to tell us their desires, and let us show them alternatives. Let us hope that one day – please, not too far in the future – we’ll be able to convince or force our governments, our leaders, to do the same; to ask their audiences – us – what they should do, so as to make this world a place to live and be happy in – yes, it is possible – rather than just a vast market in which we sell our goods and our souls. Let’s hope. Let’s work for it!
“fiction always surpasses reality but reality is always richer than fiction.”
Javier Cercas (1962) Spanish writer, journalist and professor of Spanish literature
Source: Outlaws
