“It is dangerous to condemn stories as junk which satisfy the deep hunger of millions of people. These books are not literary art, but a great deal of what is acclaimed as literary art in our time offers no comfort or fulfillment to anybody.”

“The literary story is a story that deals with the complicated human heart with an honest tolerance for the ambiguity in which we live.”

“For whatever the era, nationality, gender and genre; whether realistic, traditional, fabulist, historical, fantasist, minimalist, crossover, the writer worthy of the literary arts and a host of readers always offers the riches of stories, that we may be less deprived and disconsolate, and more human and humane; perhaps wiser, and kinder to ourselves and our brothers and other strangers.”

“In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.”

“The reason why the continental European is, to the Englishman or American, so surprisingly ignorant of the Bible, is that the authorized English version is a great work of literary art, and the continental versions are comparatively artless.”

“A literary creation can appeal to us in all sorts of ways-by its theme, subject, situations, characters. But above all it appeals to us by the presence in it of art. It is the presence of art in Crime and Punishment that moves us deeply rather than the story of Raskolnikov's crime.”