Fake realism is the escapist literature of our time. And probably the ultimate escapist reading is that masterpiece of total unreality, the daily stock market report.

The law of evolution is that the strongest survives.

We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.

As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.

Can true function arise from basic dysfunction?

Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.

The wise needn't ask, the fool asks in vain.