American Contemporary Fiction Quotes & Sayings

Contemporary American fiction has become cheap counseling to the bereaved bourgeois. — Anis Shivani

On occasion we stumble upon what seems to be a truth. Compared to the surrounding blackness, it sparkles and dazzles our eyes. But are these actually truths? Are our eyes really feasting upon light? Or just patches of grey? — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

I was just trying to demonstrate to the students of Rowland University that Rowland University was not infinite. It had taken me a long time to figure out what the problem was, but one day I realized that the students at Rowland University thought that Rowland University was infinite. Infinite bookstore. Infinite fraternities and sororities. Infinite sports teams. Infinite snack shop. Infinite Homecoming. Infinite graduation. Infinite prospects. — Jon Woodson

Most people surrendered fairy tale hopes in exchange for cookie cutter lives — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

According to catalog copy for a forthcoming book from the University of Iowa Press, Reading as Therapy: What Contemporary Fiction Does for Middle-Class Americans, by Timothy Aubry, "contemporary fiction serves primarily as a therapeutic tool for lonely, dissatisfied middle-class American readers, one that validates their own private dysfunctions while supporting elusive communities of strangers unified by shared feelings". — Timothy Aubry

It was his experience that life worked under the same guidelines as a capitalistic society. In order to get what you wanted, it was usually necessary to give up something in return. Sometimes gaining what you defined as everything meant losing what you most needed. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

On occasion he would think back to the fiercest passion it had been his pleasure to experience and reflect on what might have been. He would look upon the woman who occupied the opposite half of his bed and feel his life had not quite lived up to the promise of another day. These moments would be mercifully brief, or so he hoped. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

It was almost as if she had willed him into existence, into standing before her at the precise moment she was willing to accommodate him, arriving not a minute too early or too late. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

I love contemporary North American fiction and short fiction. My favorite writer is Jonathan Franzen, and my favorite writers of short fiction are George Saunders and Alice Munro. — Emily Perkins

His fierce appreciation of female beauty, the unrelenting desire he felt for their company, the pleasure he both derived and sought to give, had led him in and out of quite a few bedroom doors. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

There were many tomorrows to be lived through his children. He could only hope that they would face them more courageously than he had, that his mistakes would serve as warning signs rather than crutches to lean on. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Spending $100 million on a fancy gym is completely unremarkable in contemporary American higher education. Yet $10 million for a really good online biology course that could serve millions of students is seen as an outlandish, unaffordable expense. — Kevin Carey

...forever meant different things to people at different times. They could imagine what infinity looked and felt like as much as they wanted, but could never truly grasp its meaning nor bear its full weight. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Here is one of the fundamental defects of American fiction
perhaps the one character that sets it off sharply from all other known kinds of contemporary fiction. It habitually exhibits, not a man of delicate organization in revolt against the inexplicable tragedy of existence, but a man of low sensibilities and elemental desires yielding himself gladly to his environment, and so achieving what, under a third-rate civilization, passes for success. To get on: this is the aim. To weigh and reflect, to doubt and rebel: this is the thing to be avoided. — H.L. Mencken

A Medical Affair is more than compelling fiction. It also is a powerful narrative about how relationships between physicians and patients can evolve in unethical, even unlawful ways. And as a medical ethicist and educator, I was delighted to see Strauss deftly weave important information about sexual misconduct by physicians into her story line."
David Orentlicher
Professor of law, medicine and ethics at Indiana University. Oversaw drafting of American Medical Association's ethical guidelines on intimate relationships between physicians and their patients — Anne McCarthy Strauss

Once you break someone's heart, you are forever its master. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Though Marcus' essay extends over 13 pages of small text, at its core is a very simple premise: Contemporary American fiction has lost its innovative edge and its interest in language as art, and Jonathan Franzen is largely, if not exclusively, to blame. — Jess Row

We all have scars. Just because mine are hidden doesn't make them any less painful. — Nicki Salcedo

Was happiness (which was perhaps achieved not by getting what you wanted, but rather, by obtaining what you didn't know you wished for until it was in hand) a hologram that would continually change appearance with the slightest shift of perspective? Or maybe happiness by definition was a temporary state of being recognizable only in hindsight. It was impossible to catch what always managed to be overrun and end up in the rear view mirror. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

He now realized that right and wrong were intertwined notions. His arms could not differentiate between just and unjust causes. They only knew that they were empty. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.
[Q&A with Larry McCaffery, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1993, Vol. 13.2] — David Foster Wallace

The most underrated of all contemporary American writers of fiction. — William March

If Audrey sensed what he was contemplating, her silence did not let on. He turned from the window and found her looking at him with a flawless poker face. It may have been attentiveness and curiosity to hear what he would say next, or perhaps she was expecting from him what women throughout the ages, often against their better judgment, had expected of men. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Nothing felt better to him than the act of waiting for her. As long as he believed it wasn't in vain, he was able to justify his presence. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Life was a swirl of mysteries, each one waiting to be plucked up and explored, but not necessarily solved. As the weight of responsibility bore down on a person, it could feel like a long list of chores leading up to the final one - figuring out how to die with dignity. But Quincy's interpretation of his surroundings seemed a truer representation of life's meaning, or rather, the lack of meaning other than to dazzle and delight and befuddle from cradle to grave. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

A tightrope walker uncertain if he could make it to the other side probably would not. A race car driver wondering if he was taking a turn too fast was likely to lose control. If a man feared death, whether his own or the taking of another's, death would surely come calling. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Perhaps all love stories no matter how varied are essentially the same. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Was love ever easy for anyone? If less complicated, would this make it less appreciated? Perhaps love was difficult for good reason. Perhaps everything on God's green earth was the result of a flawless plan, even that which seemed most muddled. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Is freedom a lateral component, or a vertical one? — Rick Bass

The British and American literary worlds operate in an odd kind of symbiosis: our critics think our contemporary novelists are not the stuff of greatness whereas certain contemporary Americans indubitably are. Their critics often advance the exact opposite: British fiction is cool, American naff. — Will Self

...the locale did not make him think of her, nor did most things. He felt no negativity about the time they had spent together, but simply did not dwell on it much. She had been a seat filler, memorable as the smiling face of a beautiful girl in the window of a passing train, inspiring a fleeting moment of joy and promise, immediately forgotten with the opening of that day's newspaper. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Time had taught him that whether his sins were pardoned or left unforgiven, they would remain committed. Tomorrow he would hopefully choose wiser, with a stronger measure of compassion. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

And although he recognized that tenderness was not the same as passion, and certainly not equivalent to love, for now it seemed to him a suitable substitute. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

My mother clutches at the collar of my shirt. I rub her back and feel her tears on my neck. It's been decades since our bodies have been this close. It's an odd sensation, like a torn ligament knitting itself back, lumpy and imperfect, usable as long as we know not to push it too hard. — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

American Morons is the work of an original. Like Hitchcock or Ramsey Campbell, the style is precise, alert, and well-mannered, inviting us to enter Hirshberg's private world so that he may lock the door behind us. If there is anyone in contemporary fiction worth watching, it is Glen Hirshberg. — Dennis Etchison

When he spoke of love, it was in the manner of someone who can recite a phrase in a foreign language but has no idea what it means. He only knows that it sounds pretty. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Playdate. (n) A Date arranged by adults in which young children are brought together, usually at the home of one of them, for the premeditated purpose of "playing". A feature of contemporary American upscale suburban life in which "neighborhoods" have ceased to exist, and children no longer trail in and out of "neighbor childrens" houses or play in "backyards". In the absence of sidewalks in newer "gated" coummunities, children cannot "walk" to playdates but must be driven by adults, usually mothers. A "playdate" is never initiated by the players (i.e., children), but only by their mothers.
In American-suburban social climbing through playdating, this is the chapter you've been awaiting. — Joyce Carol Oates

It was just a word. It took nothing from him. It made him feel only as low as he allowed himself to feel. His own brother used it in conversation habitually. But not in the same way - filled with malice, overflowing with insult. He couldn't tear his eyes away, shook with lust for retribution. Six little letters making one huge statement. NIGGER. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.