To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to force him to lay it down with a higher ideal of life than he had when he took it up.
Gene Stratton-PorterHow a big majority of book critics and authors have come to believe and to teach that no book is true to life unless it is true to the worst in life, God knows.
Gene Stratton-PorterThere was an exquisitely beautiful conception in my brain when I did this piece of work all alone from midnight until morning after the experience of a wonderful day. But I was not able to make the consummation anywhere nearly as beautiful as the inspiration. That, I suppose, is the cry of every heart struggling for self-expression.
Gene Stratton-Porter