#realism

"I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate."

"Realism can break a writer's heart."

"Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don’t care to know any more."

"Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both."

"A crude age. Peace is stabilized with cannon and bombers, humanity with concentration camps and pogroms. We're living in a time when all standards are turned upside-down, Kern. Today the aggressor is the shepherd of peace, and the beaten and hunted are the troublemakers of the world. What's more, there are whole races who believe it!"

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will."

"The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible."

"I have been definitely influenced more by Latin American writers than by any other type of writer. They are very close in terms of voice - their humor, their fatalism, their... well, that over-used term 'magical realism.' It's a wonderful term that's just been used so much, we don't know what it means anymore."

"He’s right-handed, so I told him to draw his self-portrait with his left hand, because it’d look so ugly it’d look realistic. Since he’s a DC politician, I figured a little reality was needed in his life."