A novel should tell a story, be a pleasure to read, and at the same time it should be thought-provoking, even a bit instructive.
Interpretation
A novel should entertain and stimulate thought simultaneously.
This quote emphasizes the dual role of a novel: to provide enjoyment while also provoking reflection and imparting lessons. It highlights the balance that storytelling must achieve between being engaging and offering deeper insights into life or human nature.
In practice
In a book club, discussing how the latest read challenged your perspective.
But the fact is we did have colonies in the east of Poland, we did have a slave economy there. But this is not common knowledge - or part of our national myth. It goes against the current romanticised view of the government, and much of the country, that Poles have always been victims, never oppressors.
My books are not 'political.' I don't make political demands. They actually describe life. But when we look at human life, politics creeps in everywhere.
I think that first-person narration is very characteristic of contemporary optics, in which the individual performs the role of subjective center of the world.
The world is a fabric we weave daily on the great looms of information, discussions, films, books, gossip, little anecdotes.
I first read Sigmund Freud's 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle' as a young girl, and it helped me to understand that there are thousands of possible ways to interpret our experience, that everything has a meaning, and that interpretation is the key to reality. This was the first step to becoming a writer.
Well-written novels make you more empathetic towards other people. You can identify with someone who isn't you. You can change your identity. A 14-year-old boy can become Anna Karenina. It is a miracle.
Women's art, political art - those categorisations perpetuate a certain kind of marginality which I'm resistant to. But I absolutely define myself as a feminist.
You never know what you do that could be totally out of left field, which actually might work and give something fresh to the whole scene, to the character, whatever. If you have that with a director who then knows how to shape it, either in the direction, in the moment, or in the editing, then that's good.
You have to really have the will to hang onto the first note as it is being played, and then really stay with it and take the flight, as it were, you know, for the duration of the piece.
For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.
Composing gives me great pleasure... there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.
The sun had, in the meanwhile, sunk behind the Ettersberg. We felt in the wood the chill of the evening, and drove all the quicker to Wiemar, and to Goethe's house. Goethe urged me to go in with him for a while, and I did so. He was in an extremely engaging mood. He talked a great deal about his theory of colors, and of his obstinate opponents; remarking that he was sure that he had done something in this science.
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