The mystic prophets of the absolute cannot save us. Sustained by our history and traditions, we must save ourselves, at whatever risk of heresy or blasphemy. We can find solace in the memorable representation of the human struggle against the absolute in the finest scene in the greatest of American novels. I refer of course to the scene when Huckleberry Finn decides that the '' plain hand of Providence '' requires him to tell Miss Watson where her runaway slave Jim is to be found. Huck writes his letter of betrayal to Miss Watson and feels '' all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. '' He sits there for a while thinking '' how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell .'' Then Huck begins to think about Jim and the rush of the great river and the talking and the singing and the laughing and friendship. '' Then I happened to look around and see that paper. . . . I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: 'All right, then, I'll go to hell' - and tore it up .''
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For a long time I found the celebrities of modern painting and poetry ridiculous. I loved absurd pictures, fanlights, stage scenery, mountebanks backcloths, inn-signs, cheap colored prints; unfashionable literature, church Latin, pornographic books badly spelt, grandmothers novels, fairy stories, little books for children, old operas, empty refrains, simple rhythms.
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All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.
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Alyssa Jones: Why are we stopping?
Holden McNeil: Because I can't take this
Alyssa Jones: Can't take what?
Holden McNeil: I love you
Alyssa Jones: You love me?
Holden McNeil: I love you. And not, not in a friendly way, although I think we're great friends. And not in a misplaced affection, puppy-dog way, although I'm sure that's what you'll call it. I love you. Very, very simple, very truly. You are the epitome of everything I have ever looked for in another human being. And I know that you think of me as just a friend, and crossing that line is the furthest thing from an option you would ever consider. But I had to say it. I just, I can't take this anymore. I can't stand next to you without wanting to hold you. I can't, I can't look into your eyes without feeling that, that longing you only read about in trashy romance novels. I can't talk to you without wanting to express my love for everything you are. And I know this will probably queer our friendship - no pun intended - but I had to say it, because I've never felt this way before, and I don't care. I like who I am because of it. And if bringing this to light means we can't hang out anymore, then that hurts me. But God, I just, I couldn't allow another day to go by without just getting it out there, regardless of the outcome, which by the look on your face is to be the inevitable shoot-down. And, you know, I'll accept that. But I know...I know that some part of you is hesitating for a moment, and if there is a moment of hesitation, then that means you feel something too. All I ask, please, is that you just, you just not dismiss that - and try to dwell in it for just ten seconds. Alyssa, there isn't another soul on this fucking planet who has ever made me half the person I am when I'm with you, and I would risk this friendship for the chance to take it to the next plateau. Because it is there between you and me. You can't deny that. Even if, you know, even if we never talk again after tonight, please know that I'm forever changed because of who you are and what you've meant to me.
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The present era grabs everything that was ever written in order to transform it into films, TV programs; or cartoons. What is essential in a novel is precisely what can only be expressed in a novel, and so every adaptation contains nothing but the non-essential. If a person is still crazy enough to write novels nowadays and wants to protect them, he has to write them in such a way that they cannot be adapted, in other words, in such a way that they cannot be retold.
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'Jules Verne was not the 'mad scientist' some thought him to be. In several of his novels he showed great concern for the dangers of technology/pollution caused by the oil industry/the imminent extinction of whales, and in his 1901 novel 'The Village in the Tree Tops' he exposed the slaughter of elephants for their ivory!'
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There was a time when the average reader read a novel simply for the moral he could get out of it, and however na?ve that may have been, it was a good deal less na?ve than some of the limited objectives he has now. Today novels are considered to be entirely concerned with the social or economic or psychological forces that they will by necessity exhibit, or with those details of daily life that are for the good novelist only means to some deeper end.
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No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins; no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches; no great Universities nor public schools -- no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow; no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class -- no Epsom nor Ascot! Some such list as that might be drawn up of the absent things in American life.
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Wizard's First Rule: People can be made to believe any lie, either because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it's true. Wizard's Second Rule: The greatest harm can result from the best intentions. Wizard's Third Rule: Passion rules reason. Wizard's Fourth Rule: There is Magic to heal. In the forgiveness you grant, and more so in the forgiveness you recieve. Wizard's Fifth Rule: Mind what people do, not only what they say, for deeds will betray a lie. Wizard's Sixth Rule: The only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason. Wizard's Seventh Rule: Life is the future, not the past.
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I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.
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The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.
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The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish.
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All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.
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Novels are longer than life.
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In this world, artists are joyous. Unpredictability is the life of their paintings, their music, their novels. They delight in events not forecasted, happenings without explanation, retrospective.
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At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.
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Poorly written novels--no matter how pious and edifying the behavior of the characters--are not good in themselves and are therefore not really edifying.
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In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write essays.
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I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
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Do your bit to save humanity from lapsing back into barbarity by reading all the novels you can.
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The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are purely imaginary.
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I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the people we meet?
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After closely examining my conscience, I venture to state that in my historical novels I intended the content to be just as modern and up-to-date as in the contemporary ones.
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Between Scott on the earlier side and Dickens and Thackeray on the other, there was an immense production of novels, illustrated by not a few names which should rank high in the second class, while some would promote more than one of them to the first.
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Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.
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Novels tend to end as the Paternoster begins: with the kingdom of God on earth.
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It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.
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Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.
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