Adam Smith is misread as being amoral precisely because people don't read his first book, because they don't read 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.
I think that novels are tools of thought. They are moral philosophy with the theory left out, with just the examples of the moral situations left standing.
Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.
Adam Smith's huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.
When a writer talks about his work, he's talking about a love affair.
'The Reader' is about a young man's experience of falling in love with somebody who, it turns out, made some choices that were unavoidable in her life that resulted in horrific crimes against humanity.
A bad author can take the most moral issue and make you want to just never, ever think about that moral issue.
I think people underestimate the romance audience. It's everything from career women to high school girls to elderly women. I have male readers, too, especially for the Civil War books.
It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.
Anyone who reads advice books about romance has one problem to begin with: bad taste in literature.