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Quotes by E M Forster

'Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.'

Aspects of the Novel

'I suggest that the only books which influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.'

'The historian records, but the novelist creates.'

'The King died and then the Queen died. That is a story. The King died and then the Queen died of grief. That is a plot.'

in Aspects of the Novel

'What is so wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote, and brings to birth in us also the creative impulse.'

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