we accept fictions as fictions, as things that might be true in their world, if not quite in ours.

The novels we read allow us to encounter possible persons, versions of ourselves hat we would never see, never permit ourselves to see, never permit ourselves to become, in places we can never go and...

Reading is an activity of the imagination, and the imagination in question is not the writer’s alone.

History is story, too. You don’t encounter her directly; you’ve only heard of her through narrative of one sort or another.

If a story is no good, being based on Hamlet won’t save it.

Rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.

Literary works are not democracies. We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal. We may, but the country of Novels, Etc., doesn’t. In that faraway place, no character...

Please note, I am not suggesting that illicit drugs are required to break down social barriers.

His argument runs like this: there is no goodness without free will. Without the ability to freely choose-or reject-the good, an individual possesses no control over his own soul, and without that control, there is...

Now, Joyce being Joyce, he has about five different purposes, one not being enough for genius.

In order to remain undead, I must steal the life force of someone whose fate matters less to me than my own.’ I’ve always supposed that Wall Street traders utter essentially the same sentence.

Reading…is a full-contact sport; we crash up against the wave of words with all of our intellectual, imaginative, and emotional resources.

Every novel is brand-new. It’s never been written before in the history of the world. At the same time, it’s merely the latest in a long line of narratives—not just novels, but narratives generally—since humans...

The difference between being Achilles and almost being Achilles is the difference between living and dying.