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101 " Different: no guilty party exists in the narrative (unless you count the author, who is present everywhere and nowhere). "
― Thomas C. Foster , How to Read Literature Like a Professor
102 " On one level, everyone who writes anything knows pure originality is impossible. Everywhere you look, the ground is already camped on. So you sigh and pitch your tent where you can, knowing someone else has been there before. "
103 " What happens, if the writer is good, is usually not that the work seems derivative or trivial but just the opposite: the work actually acquires depth and resonance from the echoes and chimes it sets up with prior texts, weight from the accumulated use of certain basic patterns and tendencies. "
104 " Own the books you read. Also poems, stories, flash fiction, plays, memoirs, movies, creative nonfiction, and all the rest. ... take ownership of your reading. It's yours. It's special. It is exactly like nobody else's in the whole world. "
105 " Your reading should be fun. We only call them literary works. Really, though, it's all a form of play. So play, Dear Reader, play.And fare thee well. "