“Prologue, and a recurring phrase throughout the book.”
Slapstick (1976)
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Kurt Vonnegut 318
American writer 1922–2007Related quotes

“A book exhales a subtle odor of spirituality throughout the place it adorns.”
Source: Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters] (1937), p. 19

(24 July 2005)
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2005
Context: There are many words and phrases that should be forever kept out of the hands of book reviewers. It's sad, but true. And one of these is "self-indulgent." And this is one of those things that strikes me very odd, like reviewers accusing an author of writing in a way that seems "artificial" or "self-conscious." It is, of course, a necessary prerequisite of fiction that one employ the artifice of language and that one exist in an intensely self-conscious state. Same with "self-indulgent." What could possibly be more self-indulgent than the act of writing fantastic fiction? The author is indulging her- or himself in the expression of the fantasy, and, likewise, the readers are indulging themselves in the luxury of someone else's fantasy. I've never written a story that wasn't self-indulgent. Neither has any other fantasy or sf author. We indulge our interests, our obsessions, and assume that someone out there will feel as passionately about X as we do.

C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 90.
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The Lewis Carroll Picture Book (1899) p. 3.