A good novel should be deeply unsettling - its satisfactions should come from its authenticity and its formal coherence. We must feel something crucial is at stake.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Judgments and secrets are what make a good novel.
It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away.
If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely.
The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.
What I like in novels that I read and enjoy is interplay of theme: the mystery of how we seem to be so separate as human beings.
A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.
I always love novels that open up a subject to me - like raising a window to a beautiful, mysterious world outside.
It's expected of novels that they should explain the world and create the illusion that things are ultimately logical and coherent. But that's not what I see around me. Often, events remain mysterious and unresolved, and our emotions reach no catharsis.
A novel is a great act of passion and intellect, carpentry and largess. From the very beginning, I wrote to explain my own life to myself, and I invited readers who chose to make the journey with me to join me on the high wire.
Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.
No opposing quotes found.