It is ourselves we encounter whenever we invent fictions.

Frank Kermode
About This Quote

It is ourselves we encounter whenever we invent fictions. By invention, I mean the creation of something out of nothing—imagining something without having seen it. It’s the “art” of being human. The process of creating a story and/or poem, song or any work of art is a form of self-reflection.

We create our stories and poems to express who we are and who we want to be. Sometimes this expression comes out as a bad person or a good person: “I am like this because I want to be like that,” writes Sylvia Plath in “Daddy, I’m Sick;” “I am like this because that is how I feel about myself,” writes Emily Dickinson in “Because I Could Not Stop for Death;” and “I am like this because people tell me so.” But these stories don’t have to be true.

Source: The Sense Of An Ending: Studies In The Theory Of Fiction

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