True stories deal with hunger, imaginary ones with love.
Happy nations have no history. History is the study of mankind's misfortune.
A very great Iliad... concerns the creation of a nation.
The Iliad is the private lives of people thrown into disorder by history.
One can easily classify all works of fiction either as descendants of the Iliad or of the Odyssey.
It is the creator of fiction's point of view; it is the character who interests him. Sometimes he wants to convince the reader that the story he is telling is as interesting as universal history.