What care I if it be "wild and improbable" and "lacking in literary art"? I refuse to be any longer hampered by such canons of criticism. The one essential thing I demand of a book is that it should interest me. If it does, I forgive it every other fault.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of personal interest in literature over critical standards.
Lucy Maud Montgomery expresses her belief that a book's ability to engage a reader is far more important than its adherence to traditional literary standards. She suggests that the emotional and intellectual connection a reader feels is paramount, and any flaws in writing can be overlooked if the content captivates the reader.
In practice
Use this quote during a book club discussion to highlight the importance of personal experience with literature.
A broken heart in real life isn't half as dreadful as it is in books. It's a good deal like a bad tooth, though you won't think THAT a very romantic simile. It takes spells of aching and gives you a sleepless night now and then, but between times it lets you enjoy life and dreams and echoes and peanut candy as if there were nothing the matter with it.
A house isn't a home without the ineffable contentment of a cat with its tail folded about its feet. A cat gives mystery, charm, suggestion.
Gilbert darling, don't let's ever be afraid of things. It's such dreadful slavery. Let's be daring and adventurous and expectant. Let's dance to meet life and all it can bring to us, even if it brings scads of trouble and typhoid and twins!" (Anne to Gilbert)
Youth is not a vanished thing but something that dwells forever in the heart.
I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.
She had dreamed some brilliant dreams during the past winter and now they lay in the dust around her. In her present mood of self-disgust, she could not immediately begin dreaming again. And she discovered that, while solitude with dreams is glorious, solitude without them has few charms.
I would like to say, ladies and gentlemen, that you shouldn't be afraid of who you are. That's the first key idea. You shouldn't be afraid of who you are. You should NOT be afraid of who you are. It's very important for you to realize that.
I don't think anybody can be told how to act. I think you can give advice. But you have to find your own way through it.
For no one loves the bearer of bad tidings.
All my work, my life, everything I do is about survival, not just bare, awful, plodding survival, but survival with grace and faith. While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated.
To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.
There is nothing stronger than gentleness.
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