However much, as readers, we lose ourselves in a novel or story, fiction itself is an experience on the order of memory -not on the order of actual occurrence.
Samuel R. DelanyRead
It looks like the writer is telling you a story. What the writer is actually doing, however, is using words to evoke a series of micromemories from your own experience that inmix, join, and connect in your mind in an order the writer controls, so that, in effect, you have a sustained memory of something that never happened to you.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights how writers can manipulate words to create memories and emotions in readers that feel personal yet are fictional.
Samuel R. Delany’s quote illustrates the power of storytelling and the writer's skill in crafting narratives that resonate deeply with readers' personal experiences. Through carefully chosen words, a writer can evoke feelings and memories that may never have been experienced by the reader, allowing them to feel a connection to the narrative in a profound way. This highlights the art of writing as not just a means of communication, but as a form of memory-making that transcends reality.
Themes
WritingStorytellingMemoryExperienceWords
In practice
Example use cases
In a book club discussion about the emotional depth of fictional narratives.
More from Samuel R. Delany
All quotes →The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society’s values, can force it to change.
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How we treat our invalids - our mad, our physically or mentally compromised family members - does tell you something about who we are politically, historically, culturally.
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It is a magic book. Words mean things. When you put them together they speak. Yes, sometimes they flatten out and nothing they say is real, and that is one kind of magic. But sometimes a vision will rip up from them and shriek and clank wings clear as the sweat smudge on the paper under your thumb. And that is another kind.
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The poems ... are moments when I had the intensity to see, and the energy to build, some careful analog that completed the seeing. ... All I have been left is the exhausting habit of trying to tack up the slack in my life with words.
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I spend a lot of time thinking, if not daydreaming. People think of me as a genre writer, and a genre writer is supposed to be prolific. Since that's how people perceive me, they have to say I'm prolific. But I don't find that either complimentary or accurate.
Samuel R. DelanyRead
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