A novel should tell a story, be a pleasure to read, and at the same time it should be thought-provoking, even a bit instructive.
Interpretation
A novel should entertain and stimulate thought simultaneously.
This quote emphasizes the dual role of a novel: to provide enjoyment while also provoking reflection and imparting lessons. It highlights the balance that storytelling must achieve between being engaging and offering deeper insights into life or human nature.
In practice
In a book club, discussing how the latest read challenged your perspective.
But the fact is we did have colonies in the east of Poland, we did have a slave economy there. But this is not common knowledge - or part of our national myth. It goes against the current romanticised view of the government, and much of the country, that Poles have always been victims, never oppressors.
My books are not 'political.' I don't make political demands. They actually describe life. But when we look at human life, politics creeps in everywhere.
I think that first-person narration is very characteristic of contemporary optics, in which the individual performs the role of subjective center of the world.
The world is a fabric we weave daily on the great looms of information, discussions, films, books, gossip, little anecdotes.
I first read Sigmund Freud's 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle' as a young girl, and it helped me to understand that there are thousands of possible ways to interpret our experience, that everything has a meaning, and that interpretation is the key to reality. This was the first step to becoming a writer.
Well-written novels make you more empathetic towards other people. You can identify with someone who isn't you. You can change your identity. A 14-year-old boy can become Anna Karenina. It is a miracle.
Music is not a language. Any musical piece is akin to a boulder with complex forms, with striations and engraved designs atop and within, which men can decipher in a thousand different ways without ever finding the right answer or the best one.
One of the nice things about the Internet is you can do a comic that's just for Ph.D. students, or for truck drivers, and you get to reach all of them without having to satisfy the other 99%.
Believing that art is either worth a fortune or worth nothing at all.
On Creating β What we crave, what we want to see in others eyes, is that servile expression, an unconcealed infatuation with our gestures.
PANTOMIME, n. A play in which the story is told without violence to the language. The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.
The stuff I'm passionate about is what I write; it isn't multi-million-dollar franchise movies.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.