Most of all, I am struck by an irony central to the lot of a purebred dog: As it attains the hallmarks of its breed, it seems to simultaneously relinquish its basic dogginess, until it is less a dog than a Pomeranian, Collie or Bloodhound.
From Jean Hanff Korelitz
A successful birth is not a birth without drugs or monitors or surgery. A successful birth is when you're alive and the baby's alive.
Back in the 1980s, when I was a lowly editorial assistant by day and trying to be a novelist by night, no god reigned so supreme as the god of literary prose.
When you get right down to it, there's something uniquely satisfying in being gripped by a great plot, in begrudging whatever real-world obligations might prevent you from finding out what happens next.
A good story, a story resonant and remarkable, can be remade endlessly to tell new sides of itself for new generations of readers.
I say that glorious prose is a fine and laudable thing, but without an enthralling story, it's just so much verbal tapioca. Simply put, the best books have both, and the best writers disparage neither.
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