“The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.”

“The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are imaginary.”

“Apparently, he was too busy living his own life to be a character in the imaginary novel that was mine.”

“Apparently, he was too bust living his own life to be a character in the imaginary novel that was mine.”

“All novels . . . are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: what is the self? How can it be grasped?”

“But to be perfectly frank, this childish idea that the author of a novel has some special insight into the characters in the novel...it's ridiculous. That novel was composed of scratches on a page, dear. The characters inhabiting it have no life outside of those scratches. What happened to them? They all ceased to exist the moment the novel ended.”