“No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.”

An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics, in J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism For and Against, Cambridge, 1973, p. 19

Advice to her secretary; quoted inThe Kennedys (1984) by Peter Collier and David Horowitz

Sunni Hadith

As quoted in Letters of H. L. Mencken (1961) edited by Guy J. Forgue, p. xiii
1940s–present

Cited in: Sarah Joseph (2004), Political Theory and Power, p. 22

Source: Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, p. 89
Context: But why,' (some ask), 'why, if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own?' Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality. One can see the principle at work in his characterization. Much that in a realistic work would be done by 'character delineation' is here done simply by making the character an elf, a dwarf, or a hobbit. The imagined beings have their insides on the outside; they are visible souls. And Man as a whole, Man pitted against the universe, have we seen him at all till we see that he is like a hero in a fairy tale?

Speech at his Durham election (July 1843), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), p. 100.
1840s

From a letter to Farnsworth Wright (c. Summer 1931)
Letters