"

We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an au...more

"

All these uses a valid; all these reading of the book are "correct". For all these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators...more

"

She had always thought that if only people could communicate mind-to-mind, eliminating the ambiguities of language, then understanding would be perfec...more

"

There's always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is ...more

"

The commercial work of today is the classics of tomorrow.

"

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...more

"

Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors--we hope--of your life come from reading fiction.

"

As a child of privilege, no one is your friend. They will claim to be your friends, they will laugh at your jokes and invite you to their parties, but...more

"

A man without a wife and babies is a menace to civilization... One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.

"

Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it.

"

I learned to separate the story from the writing, probably the most important thing that any storyteller has to learn— that there are a thousand right...more

"

If he did not speak his tale, it grew dank and musty, it shrank inside him, while with the telling the tale stayed fresh and virtuous.