Arliss

“I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of.”
― Dashiell Hammett

“Modernist manuals of writing often conflate story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options. No narrative of any complexity can be built on or reduced to a single element. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing. Change is the universal aspect of all these sources of story. Story is something moving, something happening, something or somebody changing.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“You are armoured, of course, by the creative artist's splinter of ice in the heart.”
― P.D. James, A Certain Justice

“But in grieving for a murderer, thou art not grieving for the monstrous. Thou grievest for the man who failed to reject the monstrous act.”
― Katherine Addison, The Witness for the Dead