Book Quote by Marcel Proust

“The persons whom you cannot care for in a novel, because they are so bad, are the very same that you so dearly love…

— Anthony Trollope

“Happiness is not a popular subject in literary fiction. We struggle, as writers, to make happiness, contentment, and satisfaction interesting. Perfection often lacks texture.”

— Roxanne Gay

“The novelist might be greater possible help to us if they painted life as it is, and human feelings in their true proportion and…

— William Dean Howells

...our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.

— Helen Keller

“And yet, here I am. Perceiving everything that is wonderful to be proportionately difficult; everything that is possible an elaborate battle to achieve. My…

— Sara Baume

“Because affection, she had learned, was such a civilized thing, compared to love. It exacted so much less and was therefore more enduring. And…

— Karen Fisher

“. . . you would have had a protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek and to recognize the happiness that is…

— Edmund Burke

“If the one thing was right, everything elses must surely be right; the thing was axiomatic. It was true that happiness had often to…

— Dorothy Sayers

We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion…

— Dorianne Laux

“...perhaps the sweetest moment in writing is the arrival of that idea for a book which never has to be written, which is never…

— Julian Barnes

“Love could not induce us to take on the burden of propagating the species without promising us the greatest happiness we could imagine.”

— Alain de Botton

“What if, for once in history, a woman's story could be untethered from what we need it to be in order to feel better…

— Lidia Yuknavitch