Why Fiction Matters (a quotes post)

Should Christians spend time reading stories that aren’t true? Is fiction important in life? Check out what some great minds have said on the subject:

“Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.” ~C. S. Lewis~ (Click here to Tweet)

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“Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but molds it to its purpose.” ~Oscar Wilde~

“Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.” ~Salmon Rushdie~

“The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe~

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape? If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!” ~J. R. R. Tolkien~ (Click here to Tweet)

“There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.” ~P. G. Wodehouse~

“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.” ~G. K. Chesterton~ (Click here to Tweet)

“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.” ~Maya Angelou~

“What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote it.” ~E. M. Forster~

“While thought exists, words are alive and literature becomes an escape—not from—but into living.” ~Cyril Connolly~

“We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.” ~Orson Scott Card~

“A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.” ~Edith Wharton~

“Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.” ~Colum McCann~

“When at last I came upon the right book, the feeling was violent: it blew open a hole in me that made life more dangerous because I couldn’t control what came through it.” ~Nicole Krauss~

“In great literature, I become a thousand different men but still remain myself.” ~C. S. Lewis~ (Click here to Tweet)

“Literature is the safe and traditional vehicle through which we learn about the world and pass on values from one generation to the next. Books save lives.” ~Laurie Anderson~

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.” ~J. D. Salinger~

“Books are humanity in print.” ~Barbara W. Tuchman~ (Click here to Tweet)