From “The Art of Fiction”
►The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel without incurring the accusation of being
arbitrary, is that it be
interesting.
►Experience is never limited and it is never complete; it
is an immense sensibility,
a kind of huge spider-web, of the finest
silken threads, suspended in the chamber of consciousness and catching every air-borne particle in
its tissue
►A novel is a living thing, all one and continuous, like
every other organism, and in
proportion as it lives will it be found,
I think, that in each of the parts there is something of each of the other parts.