If you see something done very, very well, something that is true to itself, you can feel for two or three minutes that the clouds have parted and you've had a vision of something of what music or art or writing can do, at its best. A revelation of the full range of our human reesponse to the world--that is, what it means to be human, on earth. That seems to be what 'hope' is about in relation to art. Nothing so simple as 'happy endings.' Margaret Atwood, 1986 interview.

The widespread and growing feeling of sympathy for the freakish, the special, the physically and spiritually quirky, marks a huge advance in the quality of civilized, democratic life, and writers' passionate, unjudgmental examinations of the quirky have helped us make that advance; but one effect of the advance is that we begin to praise writers themselves for their oddity, not for their wisdom, universaility, or even art. John Gardner, "On Moral Fiction"

Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing. . . . . Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the possiblity of having the mind move in unanticipated direections, there would be no invention. Donald Barthelme, "Not-Knowing-"

In a painting that's even worth looking at, the image must be twisted as if to make a renewed assault upon the nervous system. Francis Bacon (NYT 8-22-99: 19)

What I understand by an author's love for his characters is a delight in their independent existence as other people, an attitude towards them which is analogous to our feelings towards those we love in life; and an intense interest in their personalities combined with a sort of detached solicitude, a respect for their freedom. John Bayley, "The Characters of Love"

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