Thomas C. Foster

“characters as rich and complex as those we believe ourselves to be”

— Thomas C. Foster

“When it's over, we may feel wooed, adored, appreciated, or abused, but it will have been an affair to remember.”

— Thomas C. Foster

“A novel is a made-up work about made-up people in a made-up place, all of which is very real.”

— Thomas C. Foster

“corollaries—where have I seen his face, don’t I know that”

— Thomas C. Foster

“we accept fictions as fictions, as things that might be true in their world, if not quite in ours.”

— Thomas C. Foster

“So how do we get from there to a pattern of experience that can stand for the whole of postcolonial Latin America?…

— Thomas C. Foster

“Education is mostly about institutions and getting tickets stamped; learning is what we do for ourselves. When we're lucky, they go together.…

— Thomas C. Foster

“Everywhere you look, the ground is already camped on. So you sigh and pitch your tent where you can, knowing someone else…

— Thomas C. Foster

“Always" and "never" are not words that have much meaning in literary study. For one thing, as soon as something seems to…

— Thomas C. Foster

“The novels we read allow us to encounter possible persons, versions of ourselves hat we would never see, never permit ourselves to…

— Thomas C. Foster

“We sometimes hear of the death of literature or of this or that genre, but literature doesn't die, just as it doesn't…

— Thomas C. Foster

“The novels we read allow us to encounter possible persons, visions of ourselves that we would never see, never permit ourselves to…

— Thomas C. Foster

“The process of dehuminazing the locals was under way, and it had very little to do with veracity. The Puritan narratives would…

— Thomas C. Foster

“of his need to assert responsibility for his own life. It may be that Adela does panic in the face of Nothingness,…

— Thomas C. Foster

“Every novel is brand-new. It’s never been written before in the history of the world. At the same time, it’s merely the…

— Thomas C. Foster

“I can’t go as far as Barthes in killing off the author, but I’m with him on the importance of the reader.…

— Thomas C. Foster

“What happens if the writer is good is usually not that the work seems derivative or trivial but just the opposite: the…

— Thomas C. Foster

“Going After Cacciato”

— Thomas C. Foster

“In a sense, every story or poem is a vacation.”

— Thomas C. Foster

“So what did you think the devil would look like? If he were red with a tail, horns, and cloven hooves, any…

— Thomas C. Foster

“A novel without readers is still a novel. It has meaning, since it has had at least one reader, the person who…

— Thomas C. Foster

“Reading is a full contact sport; we crash up against the wave of words with all of our intellectual, imaginative, and emotional…

— Thomas C. Foster

“Many modern and postmodern texts are essentially ironic, in which the allusions to biblical sources are used not to heighten continuities between…

— Thomas C. Foster

“Someone had to go first, show that there was a life to be recorded here, that this place, this new set of…

— Thomas C. Foster

“We love the plays, the great characters, the fabulous speeches, the witty repartee even in times of duress. I hope never to…

— Thomas C. Foster

“In Eudora Welty’s masterful story “Why I Live at the P.O.” (1941), the narrator is engaged in a sibling rivalry with her…

— Thomas C. Foster

“His argument runs like this: there is no goodness without free will. Without the ability to freely choose-or reject-the good, an individual…

— Thomas C. Foster

“We have to bring our imaginations to bear on a story if we are to see all it's possibilitiess; otherwise it's just…

— Thomas C. Foster

“And romance is just the place for creating mythic figures doing mythic things. Like carving 'civilzation' out of the wilderness. Like showing…

— Thomas C. Foster