It is the form that allows a writer the greatest opportunity to explore human experience.. For that reason, reading a novel is potentially a significant act. Because there are so many varieties of human experience, so many kinds of interaction between humans, and so many ways of creating patterns in the novel that can’t be created in a short story, a play, a poem or a movie. The novel, simply, offers more opportunities for a reader to understand the world better, including the world of artistic creation. That sounds pretty grand, but I think it’s true. Don DeLillo
About This Quote

This quote is from Richard Russo after he was asked to describe what he thought was the greatest joy in writing. He said, "I think the greatest joy in writing comes from discovering how much people can see, hear, or feel. I don't mean to say that every novel is about something real. But I do think that there are moments where I've written a scene that people will say, 'I feel this way too.' And that's something very satisfying."

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  1. Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something. - Rainbow Rowell
  2. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done. - Vincent Van Gogh
  3. Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep. - Clive Barker
  4. Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you. - Chuck Klosterman
  5. There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. - Vincent Van Gogh
More Quotes By Don DeLillo
  1. What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation.
  2. It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things...
  3. No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.
  4. I've got death inside me. It's just a question of whether or not I can outlive it.
  5. The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are...
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