An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.

Reading, like writing, is a creative act. If readers only bring a narrow range of themselves to the book, then they'll only see their narrow range reflected in it.

I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.

Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn’t care to sit next to in a train, people that don’t exist, places you’ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader’s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive.

When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.

Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected.

We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.