Traveling Through The Heart

Thomas Wilmer Dewing — Lady with a Lute (1886)

“A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart.
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But the sensibility of the writer, whether fiction or poetry, comes from paying attention. I tell my students that writing doesn’t begin when you sit down to write. It’s a way of being in the world, and the essence of it is paying attention.
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Literature is about being a complex, contradictory human being.
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Everyone needs a strong sense of…