“We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.”

“Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.”

“All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.”

“Why else do we read anyway? I think most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: The mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-real world. Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.”

“We were all fated to die, and so it is good that at least we can be sure our deaths today might bring about a good end, might make the world a better place.”

“There's always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is consciously inserted. Partly because it won't reflect the storyteller's true beliefs, it will only reflect what he BELIEVES he believes, or what he thinks he should believe or what he's been persuaded of. But when you write without deliberately expressing moral teachings, the morals that show up are the ones you actually live by. The beliefs that you don't even think to question, that you don't even notice-- those will show up. And that tells much more truth about what you believe than your deliberate moral machinations.”

“Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors--we hope--of your life come from reading fiction.”