Yquotes.com

 

My major preoccupation is the question, 'What is reality?' Many of my stories and novels deal with psychotic states or drug-induced states by which I can present the concept of a multiverse rather than a universe. Music and sociology are themes in my novels, also radical political trends; in particular I've written about fascism and my fear of it.
--
Statement of 1975 quoted in the Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) vol. 8, part 1

 

Philip Kindred - a.k.a. PKD Dick

» Philip Kindred - a.k.a. PKD Dick - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

Out of this folk mind, turned into stories and crowded with thousands of years of life, grew, literally, the Chinese novel. For these novels changed as they grew. If, as I have said, there are no single names attached beyond question to the great novels of China, it is because no one hand wrote them. From beginning as a mere tale, a story grew through succeeding versions, into a structure built by many hands.

 

Pearl Buck

 

Art must take reality by surprise. It takes those moments which are for us merely a moment, plus a moment, plus another moment, and arbitrarily transforms them into a special series of moments held together by a major emotion. Art should not, it seems to me, pose the “real” as a preoccupation. Nothing is more unreal than certain so-called “realist” novels — they’re nightmares. It is possible to achieve in a novel a certain sensory truth — the true feeling of a character — that is all.

 

Francoise Sagan

 

Ruskin says that anyone who expects perfection from a work of art knows nothing of works of art. This is an appealing sentence that, so far as I can see, is not true about a few pictures and statues and pieces of music, short stories and short poems. Whether or not you expect perfection from them, you get it; at least, there is nothing in them that you would want changed. But what Ruskin says is true about novels: anyone who expects perfection from even the greatest novel knows nothing of novels.

 

Randall Jarrell

 

I've made more money in novels than I did in my entire career in comics. The few years I did novels, they paid off so well, I don't have to be a slave to doing comics. But I'd rather do comics than novels. If I wanted to do it just for the money, I'd run off and do another novel. I just don't have the juice for it. I'm really not interested in it. It's a love for what this medium is.

 

Jim Starlin

 

I write short stories. They may appear big in size, but when you consider it, they're four or five novels in one. ... In return for picking up one of my books, I'm trying to give them value for their money. ... the goal of writing any book is to create the illusion that what you are reading is reality and you're part of it.

 

James Clavell