History and Fiction

History, really, is fiction - not because it is made up of invented facts, for the facts are real, but because in the organization of those facts there is much fiction.
- José Saramago, The Paris Review, "The Art of Fiction No. 155"

The Storyteller

It is the storyteller... who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that survivors must have — otherwise surviving would have no meaning... This is very, very important... Memory is necessary if surviving is going to be more than just a technical thing.
Chinua Achebe, as quoted by the imitable Brain Pickings

Prophecy

What prophecy actually is is not that you actually know that the bomb will fall in 1942. It's that you know and feel something that somebody knows and feels in a hundred years. And maybe articulate it in a hint — a concrete way that they can pick up on in a hundred years.
- Allen Ginsberg, Paris Review, "The Art of Poetry No. 8"

Sermons

Is a sermon most off putting when delivered from the pulpit of a cathedral or a street corner?
- Mauro Javier Cardenas in The Revolutionaries Try Again

I'll Rise

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
  • Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise”
There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.
- Herman Melville in Moby Dick
Communication is, precisely, the avoidance of sincerity in order to reach agreement.
- Daniel Saldaña Paris in "Among Strange Victims"
Places and people are like things: both made of memories and meaningful to us in the same way: we construct ourselves in our conversations with them.
- Bilal Tanweer in "The Scatter Here is Too Great"
We can prevent reading: but in the decree that forbids reading there will still be read something of the truth that we would wish never to be read
- Italo Calvino in "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler"
But what if everything that is to happen has already happened, and only the consequences are playing themselves out?
- Teju Cole in "Every Day is for the Thief"
Poets are set against the world because they cannot accept that what there seems to be is all there is.
- Ben Okri

Is the engineer an artist? Good question. My favorite quote:

It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending.
Now thats some powerful stuff.
Every Western ideology promises some ultimate goal — a happy, a just, or a peaceful society. I don't believe in that. We are things in flux. It may be that the stone always slides away from us and must be rolled back up again, but it's something we must do; the stone belongs to us.
Gunter Grass in the Paris Review's Art of Fiction No. 124
One should not fear the rebel.  One should not be afraid of becoming a rebel himself.  To do something new has always been called rebellion...What is to be feared is the death of the spirit.  To believe only what one is taught to believe, to say only what one is taught to say, to do only what one is asked to do, to find security in life by existing formally like a doll poured from a model, to lose completely the idea of self confidence in ones independence and the belief in self-improvement - this is death of the spirit.  To live is to rebel.
- Tokutomi Roka, 1911, Japan
I smile to keep from howling, I sing so I won't pray or curse.
- Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives
I think good narrative comes from observing the world and what happens inside yourself. The opportunity to move in and out of two realities, your inner world and the world outside of you, is what I find fascinating about writing. If you just want to tell stories, there are other ways, other media, to do so.
- Laia Jufresa in BOMB Magazine
I personally feel that no one gives a shit about my books — maybe I'm just a pessimist — and that idea feels horrible and refreshing at the same time. I feel ignored and doomed to anonymity, but free to do whatever I want within the sacred space of literature. I can very easily forget about the world, which has forgotten about me since the beginning, and write my stuff to be at peace and to better understand myself and my surroundings, without trying to please anyone.
- Daniel Saldaña Paris in BOMB Magazine
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer; art is everything else.
- Donal Ervin Knuth, via Visual Poetry
I want to be around people that do things. I don’t want to be around people anymore that judge or talk about what people do. I want to be around people that dream and support and do things.
- Amy Poehler
It's a terrible thing for children not to get bored and for adults not to get lost anymore
- Valeria Luiselli in BOMB Magazine
I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.
- Robert Henri
Salt on wound / And water on mud / We are only memories / On the run across time
- Fadwa Suleiman, "Genesis" translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Hacker, A Public Space No. 24, 2016.
When truly brothers, men don't sing in unison, but in harmony.

-W.H. Auden