“A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest.”

“People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.”

“There is only one argument for doing something; the rest are arguments for doing nothing”

“A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life: that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression”

“In his Preface to the 1892 edition of Tess of the d’Urbervilles Hardy warns the reader that ‘a novel is an impression, not an argument’. However, the text offers several explanations of Tess’s tragedy; social, psychological, hereditary, and fatalistic, all of which proceed from the assumption that Hardy’s text is in some sense determined, and that the character of Tess is somehow knowable. Indeed, the tragedy of Tess is in this sense overdetermined. But it should be remembered that the character of Tess is constructed in the text from many points of observation, including that of the ambivalent narrator; constructed that is from impressions.”

“No argument, no matter how convincing, will give courage to a coward”