Rachel Bok
https://www.goodreads.com/rachelbok
“It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I’ve never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between going and coming.”
― The Secret Life of Bees
― The Secret Life of Bees
“Spinners take out the bad stuff, leave in the good. I’ve always thought how nice it would be to have spinners like this for human beings. Just toss them in and let the spinner do its work.”
― The Secret Life of Bees
― The Secret Life of Bees
“All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart
from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from
certain great dominants of our contemporary life -- science, all the sciences,
and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them.
Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an
alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in fiction, is a
metaphor.
A metaphor for what?
If I could have said it non-metaphorically, I would not have written all these
words, this novel; and Genly Ai would never have sat down at my desk and used
up my ink and typewriter ribbon in informing me, and you, rather solemnly,
that the truth is a matter of the imagination.”
―
from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from
certain great dominants of our contemporary life -- science, all the sciences,
and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them.
Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an
alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in fiction, is a
metaphor.
A metaphor for what?
If I could have said it non-metaphorically, I would not have written all these
words, this novel; and Genly Ai would never have sat down at my desk and used
up my ink and typewriter ribbon in informing me, and you, rather solemnly,
that the truth is a matter of the imagination.”
―
“If I’d found out that Norman Mailer liked me, I’d have killed myself. I think he was too hung up. I’m glad Kurt Vonnegut didn’t like me either. He had problems, terrible problems. He couldn’t see the world the way I see it. I suppose I’m too much Pollyanna, he was too much Cassandra. Actually I prefer to see myself as the Janus, the two-faced god who is half Pollyanna and half Cassandra, warning of the future and perhaps living too much in the past—a combination of both. But I don’t think I’m too over optimistic.”
―
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“Ransack the language as he might, words failed him. He wanted another landscape, and another tongue.”
― Orlando
― Orlando
Rachel’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Rachel’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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