Daily Dose

From The Apprentice Writer: Essays, by Julian Green

FEW NOVELISTS

"Few novelists have been as awkward as Balzac, or Emily Bronte, or Conrad, or Marcel Proust. They proved more than once indifferent watchmakers, but this distinction can be made between their novels and, let us say, 'clever' novels: the latter emit a thin, regular, and, to some ears, immensely satisfactory ticking, whereas the former throb from page to page with the beating of the human heart."

From How a Novelist Begins