No machines will ever truly fully figure the brain out, because the brain's performance is constantly altered or else constrained by this inanimate, rogue artifact you can't control, namely, speech.
Tom WolfeRead
The problem with fiction, it has to be plausible. That's not true with non-fiction.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Fiction requires believability, while non-fiction is based on real events and facts.
Tom Wolfe highlights a fundamental difference between fiction and non-fiction in this quote. In fiction, the narrative must maintain a certain level of plausibility to resonate with readers and feel authentic, while non-fiction, grounded in reality, doesn't face the same constraints and can deal with complexities and absurdities that are true to life.
Themes
FictionNon-FictionPlausibilityRealityWriting
In practice
Example use cases
In a literature class discussing the boundaries of genre.
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There has been a time on earth when poets had been young and dead and famous - and were men. But now the poet as the tragic child of grandeur and destiny had changed. The child of genius was a woman, now, and the man was gone.
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