“There is no use writing anything that has been written before unless you can beat it. What a writer in our time has to do is write what hasn’t been written before or beat dead men at what they have done.”

ERNEST HEMINGWAY, 1936

“Society and man are mutually dependent enemies and the writer’s job [is] to go on forever defining and defending the paradox—lest, God forbid, it be resolved.”

ARTHUR MILLER, 1974

“The purpose of fiction is the creation of a small furry object that will break your heart.”

DONALD BARTHELME