If Realism called it like it saw it, Metafiction simply called it as it saw itself seeing itself see it.

My bones are ringing the way sometimes people say their ears are ringing, I'm so tired.

[T]o really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.

Dostoevsky wrote fiction about identity, moral value, death, will, sexual vs. spiritual love, greed, freedom, obsession, reason, faith, suicide. And he did it without ever reducing his characters to mouthpieces or his books to tracts. His concern was always what it is to be a human being—that is, how to be an actual *person*, someone whose life is informed by values and principles, instead of just an especially shrewd kind of self-preserving animal.

If you worship power, you will feel weak and afraid, needing ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay.

I have filled 3 Mead notebooks trying to figure out whether it was Them or Just Me.

The point of books is to combat loneliness.