This is what is behind the special relationship between tale and travel, and, perhaps, the reason why narrative writing is so closely bound up with walking. To write is to carve a new path through the terrain of the imagination, or to point out new features on a familiar route. To read is to travel through that terrain that the author as guide - a guide one may not always agree with our trust, but who can at least be counted upon to take one somewhere. I have have often wished that my sentences could be written out as a single line running into distances so that it would be clear that a sentence is likewise a road and reading is traveling. .Rebecca Solnit
About This Quote
In this quote, Barbara Johnson of the New York Times talks about how reading a great novel can be a form of travel, and that writing a great novel is a form of travel as well. A good novel will allow you to travel to another place and time, and make you feel like you are there. A great novel will make you feel like you are the person who wrote it, and give you the feeling that you can do anything.
Source: Wanderlust: A History Of Walking
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