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Fiction is meant to illuminate, to explode, to refresh.

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I write to make sense of my life."-John Cheever, quoted in _Cheever - A Life_ (2009) by Blake Bailey

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Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction.

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For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to ...more

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The novel remains for me one of the few forms...where we can describe, step by step, minute by minute, our not altogether unpleasant struggle to put o...more