At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realise that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We have jobs, children, partners, debts. This is the part of us to which literary fiction speaks.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I'd always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s as substitutes for experience.
Literature is reflecting what is happening in life. More and more women are having relationships with younger men. It's partly that women are not losing their figures now.
It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave.
In our youths, many of us suspected that being tied down to a partner and family might constrain us. But after 40, even that landscape starts to shift. Many singletons turn inward and start longing for the things so many of us longed to be free of in our 20s.
Solitude terrifies the soul at twenty.
Literature can allow us to experience the best side of humankind, where instead of giving up, we struggle desperately in the ruins for love, connection and hope.
One likes to think one grows as a writer as one ages, else all you get is an 'old' young writer. Beyond that is the changing landscape of the universe and the stories I choose to tell.
I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?
My twenties were entirely taken up with literature. Entirely.
Maybe when I'm sixty-five I'll talk about my literary life.
No opposing quotes found.