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"The novel doesn't come into existence until certain methods of reproducing fiction come along."
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"We are born more dead than when we die after we have searched death through the storm of the instants of our entire life."

"That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?''Yes' Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.'Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."

"I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating."

"To exist is to stand out, away from the background," The Preacher said. "You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgment of your existence."

"Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece."

"On embarking to return we could perceive no sign of One Tree Island; and as we swept down towards the sea the leafy top of a tree seen in the clear water under the boat was the only evidence of its existence; though a few hours ago it had formed so prominent an object."
Explore more quotes by Leslie Fiedler

"Of the female black authors, I really like Morrison's early books a lot. But she's really become so much a clone of Faulkner. He did it better."

"I think Henry Miller has had huge influence not because he wrote about sex, but because the memoir or the nonfiction novel has become such a monumental force in American publishing, if not in literature."

"Anybody in the next centuries wanting to know what it was like to be a poet in the middle of the 20th century should read Kaddish."

"If there's one thing I can't stand, it's somebody doing something because I pushed them in that direction."

"I've had a tough time with Pynchon. I liked him very much when I first read him. I liked him less with each book. He got denser and more complex in a way that didn't really pay off."

"Hemingway seems to be in a funny position. People nowadays can't identify with him closely as a member of their own generation, and he isn't yet historical."

"Jane Austen is at the end of the line that begins with Samuel Richardson, which takes wonder and magic out of the novel, treats not the past but the present."
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