“I have discovered a universal rule which seems to apply more than any other in all human actions or words: namely, to steer away from affectation at all costs, as if it were a rough and dangerous reef, and (to use perhaps a novel word for it) to practise in all things a certain nonchalance [sprezzatura] which conceals all artistry and makes whatever one says or does seem uncontrived and effortless.” IfsHumansDoeUseSeemsActionCertainNovelDangerousCostAll ThingsUniversalRoughSteersArtistryEffortlessPractiseReefsHuman ActionsNonchalance Author:Baldassare Castiglione
“Once in a while - perhaps every 10 years, or even every generation - a novel appears that profoundly questions the way we look at the world, and at ourselves. Beijing Coma is a poetic examination not just of a country at a defining moment in its history, but of the universal right to remember and to hope. It is, in every sense, a landmark work of fiction” WorldWayYearsLooksCountryMomentsRememberFictionNovelGenerationsUniversalPoeticDefiningExaminationLandmarksComaBeijingDefining Moments Author:Tash Aw
“... a novel survives because of its basic truthfulness, its having within it something general and universal, and a quality of imaginative perception which applies just as much now as it did in the fifty or hundred or two hundred years since the novel came to life.” YearsTwoTruthFictionQualityNovelPerceptionHundredUniversalFiftyTruth Of LifeImaginativeTruthfulness Author:Elizabeth Bowen
“I'm always interested in the way people speak and move in their environment, in a very particular environment. I'm never interested in writing a kind of neutral, universal novel that could be set anywhere. To me, the any novel is a local thing always.” PeopleWayWritingKindMovingSpeakNovelEnvironmentParticularUniversalLocals Author:Zadie Smith