James Wood

“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.”

“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.”