What care I if it be "wild and improbable" and "lacking in literary art"? I refuse to be any longer hampered by such canons of criticism. The one essential thing I demand of a book is that it should interest me. If it does, I forgive it every other fault.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of personal interest in literature over critical standards.
Lucy Maud Montgomery expresses her belief that a book's ability to engage a reader is far more important than its adherence to traditional literary standards. She suggests that the emotional and intellectual connection a reader feels is paramount, and any flaws in writing can be overlooked if the content captivates the reader.
In practice
Use this quote during a book club discussion to highlight the importance of personal experience with literature.
A broken heart in real life isn't half as dreadful as it is in books. It's a good deal like a bad tooth, though you won't think THAT a very romantic simile. It takes spells of aching and gives you a sleepless night now and then, but between times it lets you enjoy life and dreams and echoes and peanut candy as if there were nothing the matter with it.
A house isn't a home without the ineffable contentment of a cat with its tail folded about its feet. A cat gives mystery, charm, suggestion.
Gilbert darling, don't let's ever be afraid of things. It's such dreadful slavery. Let's be daring and adventurous and expectant. Let's dance to meet life and all it can bring to us, even if it brings scads of trouble and typhoid and twins!" (Anne to Gilbert)
Youth is not a vanished thing but something that dwells forever in the heart.
I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.
She had dreamed some brilliant dreams during the past winter and now they lay in the dust around her. In her present mood of self-disgust, she could not immediately begin dreaming again. And she discovered that, while solitude with dreams is glorious, solitude without them has few charms.
We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.
We learn best to listen to our own voices if we are listening at the same time to other women-whose stories, for all our differences, turn out, if we listen well, to be our stories also.
We're receiving information from all the planes of our consciousness all the time, but we don't acknowledge their existence; we treat the information as static, as noise.
Do not repeat after me words that you do not understand. Do not merely put on a mask of my ideas, for it will be an illusion and you will thereby deceive yourself.
I've seen many troubles in my time, only half of which ever came true.
You can Light Up the Whole World by Giving without any Expectation Back.
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