The vitality of literary character has less to do with dramatic action, novelistic coherence, and even plain plausibility–let alone likeability–than with a larger philosophical or metaphysical sense, our awareness that a character’s actions are deeply important, that something profound is at stake, with the author brooding over the face of that character like God over the face of the waters. James Wood
I am not an angel, ' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall...
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Unknown
Top 15 Things Money Can’t BuyTime. Happiness. Inner Peace. Integrity. Love. Character. Manners. Health. Respect. Morals. Trust. Patience. Class. Common sense. Dignity.
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Roy T. Bennett
There is an emotional promiscuity we’ve noticed among many good young men and women. The young man understands something of the journey of the heart. He wants to talk, to “share the journey.” The woman is grateful to be pursued, she opens up. They share...
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Stasi Eldredge
The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back.
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Abigail Van Buren
Character – the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life – is the source from which self-respect springs.
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Joan Didion
More Quotes By James Wood
Convention itself, like metaphor itself, is not dead; but it is always dying.
Narrative secrets are not the same as human mysteries, a lesson that novelists seem fates to forget, again and again; the former quickly confess themselves, and fall silent, while the true mysteries go on speaking.
The vitality of literary character has less to do with dramatic action, novelistic coherence, and even plain plausibility–let alone likeability–than with a larger philosophical or metaphysical sense, our awareness that a character’s actions are deeply important, that something profound is at stake, with the author...
Publishers, readers, booksellers, even critics, acclaim the novel that one can deliciously sink into, forget oneself in, the novel that returns us to the innocence of childhood or the dream of the cartoon, the novel of a thousand confections and no unwanted significance. What becomes...
