Contemporary Literature Quotes

“[novan]: bassists are very good with their fingers
[novan]: and some of us sing backup vocals, so that means we're good with our mouths too...

(~ IM chat with Novan Chang, 18, bassist)”
― Jess C Scott, EyeLeash: A Blog Novel

“Read the best writers from all different periods; keep your reading of contemporaries in proportion - you do not want a steady diet of contemporary literature. You already belong to your time.”
― Lydia Davis, Essays One

“I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant.”
― Aberjhani, The American Poet Who Went Home Again

“I searched modern fiction and poetry for clues to how we confronted and evaded reality, how we articulated our experience and turned to language not to revel ourselves but to hide. I was as sure then as I am now that by looking at contemporary Iranian fiction I could gain access to a real understanding of political and social events. (p289)”
― Azar Nafisi, Things I've Been Silent About

“Shortly before school started, I moved into a studio apartment on a quiet street near the bustle of the downtown in one of the most self-conscious bends of the world. The “Gold Coast” was a neighborhood that stretched five blocks along the lake in a sliver of land just south of Lincoln Park and north of River North. The streets were like fine necklaces and strung together were the brownstone houses and tall condominiums and tiny mansions like pearls, and when the day broke and the sun faded away, their lights burned like jewels shining gaudily in the night.
The world’s most elegant bazaar, Michigan Avenue, jutted out from its eastern tip near The Drake Hotel and the timeless blue-green waters of Lake Michigan pressed its shores. The fractious make-up of the people that inhabited it, the flat squareness of its parks and the hint of the lake at the ends of its tree-lined streets squeezed together a domesticated cesspool of age and wealth and standing. It was a place one could readily dress up for an expensive dinner at one of the fashionable restaurants or have a drink miles high in the lounge of the looming John Hancock Building and five minutes later be out walking on the beach with pants cuffed and feet in the cool water at the lake’s edge.”
― Daniel Amory, Minor Snobs

“It was a generation growing in its disillusionment about the deepening recession and the backroom handshakes and greedy deals for private little pots of gold that created the largest financial meltdown since the Great Depression. As heirs to the throne, we all knew, of course, how bad the economy was, and our dreams, the ones we were told were all right to dream, were teetering gradually toward disintegration. However, on that night, everyone seemed physically at ease and exempt from life’s worries with final exams over and bar class a distant dream with a week before the first lecture, and as I looked around at the jubilant faces and loud voices, if you listened carefully enough you could almost hear the culmination of three years in the breath of the night gasp in an exultant sigh as if to say, “Law school was over at last!”
― Daniel Amory, Minor Snobs

“..... this isn't some LA country rock jam reminiscing on the pyschtotropic pot pansies of Haight Ashbury . This is the soot and smut of London mate !”
― Saira Viola

“I decided then that love love better be watched closely. So I did just that. Watched to see how everybody did their loving. I have been doing it now all my life, and all I can tell you . . . it is a lesson and a education to watch the way different people love, or don't love, other people.”
― J. California Cooper, Some Soul To Keep

“When writing is music, it interweaves perfumes with rhythms, magic with life, play with love.”
― Leslie Del Re, Springtime's Odyssey: L'Odyssée du Printemps

“Some folks struggled disproportionately, carrying things that others couldn't even lift.”
― Diane Marie Brown, Black Candle Women

“Roxy was bi, and in my opinion she was—and still is—a total badass. Of all my childhood friends, this girl’s my bestie. Even when we were young, I knew deep down that Roxy was going to conquer the world. Her brilliance, coupled with her unwavering commitment to feminism and human rights, made her truly exceptional. And she cared, really cared, about animals and the pressing issues in our world. She wasn’t just one of these people that wore shirts and posted awareness videos online. She dedicated her weekends to protests and taking action. And I loved that she was hooking up with Amren, or whoever this girl was, if she made Roxy happy. I loved her. I loved all of her. Hopefully Amren would see how awesome Roxy was and make her feel special.”
― Kayla Cunningham

“I [...] squarely and enthusiastically recommend ['Hey Boy' by A.W.W. Bremont][...]. [...][T]he start of a no doubt stellar oeuvre to come.”
― Dennis Cooper

“Everything is a McApocalypse to those people. They think the sky is falling, but the universe is laughing at them.”
― Michael C. Haymes

“ليس أصعب من أن يحاول الرجل أن يدخل عالم الأنثى ليرى الأحداث من خلال عينيها لأن عالمها هذا مملكة منيعة تحرسها أسوار عالية من الغموض الأنثوي الأزلي من المحال اقتحامها. هذا الغموض سحر تنثره الأنثى حولها ليملأ الرجل بذلك الشعور الغامر بقيمته و رجولته فقط عندما يكون إلى جانبها. و إذا تجرأ على التسلل إلى عالمها سيضيع في فضائه المترامي الأطراف الذي تستطيع وحدها هي أن تخنزله كله بنظرة حانية واحدة أو ابتسامة عابرة أو دمعة هاربة.”
― أحمد رفل الخليل, ‫عودة إلى بغداد: قصة كل مغترب عن وطنه ظلّ يحلم بالعودة و كل مغترب داخل وطنه ظلّ يحلم بالرحيل‬

“That part of west that was full of rocks and full up with sadness in the little sacks grown men develop under their eyes, the accumulation of tears they don't cry as they walk along, shut down, like an out-of-season seaside café.”
― Elaine Feeney, As You Were

“Fill my lungs up with the that sweet, sweet city smog and let me suffocate in a place with bodegas.”
― Laura Hankin, A Special Place for Women

“Contemporary literature is not interested in goodness on a large or even limited scale. When it appears, it is with a note of apology in its hand and has trouble speaking its name.”
― Toni Morrison

“...[W]hile language came readily to Tess when dealing with herself alone, having one-way conversations over all of her choices on her long walks in the woods, or on her way to school, now she no longer tabled these discussions with her husband.”
― Elaine Feeney, How to Build a Boat

“Today poetry is a modestly upwardly mobile, middle-class profession—not as lucrative as waste management or dermatology but several big steps above the squalor of bohemia.”
― Dana Gioia, Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture

“Professional courtesy has no place in literary journalism.”
― Dana Gioia, Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture

“The American writer is becoming as standardized as the American car—functional, streamlined, and increasingly interchangeable.”
― Dana Gioia, The Catholic Writer Today: And Other Essays

“The more intriguing question is not why we are here, but rather where we are going.

In just three generations, we’ve transitioned from steam power to artificial intelligence.

Wherever we’re headed, it seems we’re in a hurry to get there.”
― Philos Fablewright , Curious

“To complicate matters, the human machine, with its hardware and software components, doesn’t always function as anticipated.

Our DNA, our genetic code, essentially acts like an instruction manual, working in the background to influence our behaviour alongside our occasionally faulty logic systems, making us vulnerable to emotional influence.

Annoyingly, there is no user manual to explain this.”
― Philos Fablewright, Curious

“For those wondering why we are here,
and where here is?”
― Philos Fablewright, Curious

“The name ‘Philos’ comes from Greek, signifying friend or lover. ‘Fable’ has its roots in Latin, meaning story or tale, while ‘Wright’ hails from Old English, symbolising craftsman or maker.”
― Philos Fablewright, Curious

“I’m walking the dogs
But in a cellar in my mind I am rehearsing a scene
In which a woman takes her child to a wasteland
And abandons it
War is coming and she is in flight

- The Last Day Of Your Childhood”
― Sasha Dugdale, Deformations

“O, gentle Bard, if thou couldst but glimpse our digital age!
We set words in light called ‘blogs,’
Which are, alas, neither fens nor afflictions.
They are thoughts taken wing for the world to see,
Much like thou didst with plays posthumously,
Held eternally aloft in iambic pentameter.”
― Stewart Stafford

“If we bloggers have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but wander’d here
While this wordage did appear.
And this sprightly, vigorous theme,
No more yielding but a dream.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“And though not everyone went in, many of us walked in on a Friday and came out ten years later. Some never came back.”
― Jorge Noguerales, La película de mi viaje

“With my life still in shambles, why would anyone want to be with me? Talk about a fixer-upper. Do men even go to the bother of trying to fix women, or is it only the other way around?”
― H.H. Rune, Find Me Book Three: She Walked a Different Path