… If the novelist is not sustained by a hope of money, then he must be sustained by a hope of salvation, or he simply won’t survive the ordeal. People without hope not only do not write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them. They don’t take long looks at anything because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have an experience.
Or, for a salvation plea you can dance to, there’s this…
“There is one indubitable indication distinguishing real art from its counterfeit, namely, the infectiousness of art… however poetical, realistic, effectful, or interesting a work may be, it is not a work of art if it does not evoke that feeling… of joy and of spiritual union with… the author and with… those who are also infected by it… (T)he receiver…is so united to the artist that he feels as if the work were his own and not someone else’s – as if what it expresses were just what he had long been wishing to express.”
– from “What is Art?”
