They're ugly, but those are the facts of life.
Harper LeeRead
As a reader I loathe introductions...Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.
Interpretation
Introductions can spoil the excitement of discovering a story.
Harper Lee expresses her disdain for introductions in literature, suggesting that they can dampen the reader's enjoyment and curiosity. She believes that a well-crafted story should allow readers to enter without the predetermined notions or spoilers that introductions often provide, thereby enhancing the joy of discovering the narrative on their own terms.
In practice
Discussing the role of introductions in a book club meeting.
They're ugly, but those are the facts of life.
It's better to be silent than to be a fool.
Don’t talk like that, Dill,” said Aunt Alexandra. “It’s not becoming to a child. It’s – cynical.” “I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin’ the truth’s not cynical, is it?” “The way you tell it, it is.
With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.
He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.
You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don't.
It perhaps might be said--if any one dared--that the most worthless literature of the world has been that which has been written by the men of one nation concerning the men of another.
I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved ... The great novelists have brought us to see whatever they wish us to see through some character. Otherwise they would not be novelists, but poet, historians, or pamphleteers.
Read with care, George Orwell's diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics.
Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.
There is no future for e-books, because they are not books. E-books smell like burned fuel.
One does not argue about The Wind in the Willows.
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