In the ongoing celebration that is literature, we are asked to imagine ourselves as other selves, for better or worse.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.
Part of being a fiction writer is being able to imagine how someone else is thinking and feeling. I think I've always been good at that.
It's a great thing when you feel that you recognize yourself, deeply and movingly, in a work of literature.
If things are not so good, you may be one to imagine something better. For me, I was able to imagine myself as in a role of greater importance than I would seem to be ordinarily.
On some level, I think we want our reading self to represent our best self.
Literature can allow us to experience the best side of humankind, where instead of giving up, we struggle desperately in the ruins for love, connection and hope.
Literary readings aren't going to shake their reputation as the added-fibre of our entertainment diet until the people who organize and participate in them snap out of this mentality.
The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.
What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.
I think what a lot of fiction is, is the imagining of the worst so as to prepare ourselves.
No opposing quotes found.