If fiction changes things, it's usually because it's a powerful way of exploring social issues. And it helps us to understand people who are different from us.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think in our time, you know, so much of the information we get is pre-polarized. Fiction has a way of reminding us that we actually are very similar in our emotions and our neurology and our desires and our fears, so I think it's a nice way to neutralize that polarization.
People who read fiction are different from other people because they are people who are interested in an imagined world.
Fiction allows you to embody certain ideas and give them an emotional reality. The characters allow you to get close viscerally to an idea.
I think one of the paradoxes of writing fiction is when people enjoy it, they want it to be real. So they look for connections.
I think fiction lends itself to messiness rather than the ideal, and plays well with the ironies surrounding what happens versus what should happen.
There's a reason why every human society has fiction. It teaches us how to be 'good', to behave in a way that is for the benefit of the whole community.
Fiction basically is a form of gossip where you want to enter other people's lives, the lives of people you don't know, and you want to know what's going to happen to them.
One reason we love fiction is because stories have a comforting shape. They provide a resolution that's lacking in our regular lives.
Fiction has subversive potential. People let it into their minds, like the Trojan Horse. They don't know what's inside. You hook them with the story, and God can work below the level of their consciousness. Fiction can be propaganda for evil or convey a theme that impacts people for good.
One of the things that writing has taught me is that fiction has a life of its own. Fictional places are sometimes more real than the view from our bedroom window. Fictional people can sometimes become as close to us as our loved ones.
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