Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey.

It isn’t happiness I am concerned with but experience.

One can easily classify all works of fiction either as descendants of the Iliad or of the Odyssey.

The Iliad is the private lives of people thrown into disorder by history.

True stories deal with hunger, imaginary ones with love.

A very great Iliad... concerns the creation of a nation.

Happy nations have no history. History is the study of mankind's misfortune.