If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There's a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you're dea...ling mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they're the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Novelists are perhaps the last people in the world to be entrusted with opinions. The nature of a novel is that it has no opinions..., only the dialectic of contrary views, some of which, all of which, may be untenable and even silly. A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although ... he may be permitted to be an intellectual.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility--I wish the history to be natural though the sent...iments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But I hate things all fiction ... there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric--and pure invention is b...ut the talent of a liar.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought... to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up, I'll write one--but I'm grown up now," she added in a sorrowful tone: "At least there's no room to grow up any more here."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »