"Science fiction is, after all, the art of extrapolation."

Michael Dirda Journalism See all quotes by Michael Dirda →

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“Fiction is, the art of making up something. That's what it's all about, folks. Making stacks of money.”

“Off and on during my life, I have passed sleepless nights in making up lists of the dozen or so books a person might choose to take along if suddenly marooned on a desert island. This is a relatively easy game for serious readers: At least half the titles would be recognized classics — the Bible, Plato, Shakespeare, a good dictionary, that sort of thing. But occasionally I have made the challenge a little more difficult: "What if you could take just one book?”

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"Poetic truth is different from scientific truth since it reveals the real in its qualitative uniqueness and not in its quantitative universality. Poetry is the language of the soul, while prose is the…"

— Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

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"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."

— Eric Hoffer

Literature1902–1983

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"Who would have believed it probable or possible, before these discoveries were made, that beneath the heap of earth and rubbish which marked the site of Nineveh, there would be found the history of th…"

— Austen Henry Layard

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