Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written.
Interpretation
The best works of literature seem to come to life on their own, while lesser works require significant effort.
This quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests that truly great literature flows effortlessly from the author's inspiration and imagination, as if the story and characters exist independently of the writer. In contrast, inferior works often feel forced and unnatural because they lack the genuine creativity and passion that characterize exceptional writing.
In practice
During a writing workshop, you might use this quote to inspire participants to find their natural voice.
Don't be so anxious about it,' she laughed. 'I'm not used to being loved. I wouldn't know what to do; I never got the trick of it.' She looked down at him, shy and fatigued. 'So here we are. I told you years ago that I had the makings of Cinderella.' He took her hand; she drew it back instinctively and then replaced it in his. 'Beg your pardon. Not even used to being touched. But I'm not afraid of you, if you stay quiet and don't move suddenly.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
It was about then [1920] that I wrote a line which certain people will not let me forget: "She was a faded but still lovely woman of twenty-seven."
The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.
But you can love more than just one person, can't you?
A sudden gust of rain blew over them and then another - as if small liquid clouds were bouncing along the land. Lightning entered the sea far off and the air blew full of crackling thunder. The table cloths blew around the pillars. They blew and blew and blew. The flags twisted around the red chairs like live things, the banners were ragged, the corners of the table tore off through the burbling billowing ends of the cloths.
Short fiction and the novel, nonfiction and fiction, electronic texts and books - these are not opposites. One need not destroy the other to survive.
The disappointing second novel is measured against the brilliant first novel - often no novel lives up to the first. Literary improvement seems like an unfair expectation.
The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.
When 'Midnight's Children' came out, people in the West tended to respond to the fantasy elements in the novel, to praise it in those terms. In India, people read it like a history book.
There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?
I love it when novels contain a broad cast of characters, including queer ones.
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