The artist must be a witness to the eternal.
"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated."
"A personality is a full congress of orators and pressure groups, of children, demagogues, communists, isolationists, war mongers, mugwumps, grafters, prayer-makers, adventurers and clerks; with each of these in a minority of one."
The greatest predictor of a novel's quality is the novelist's willingness to confront the unlovely truth about himself or herself.