" Writing is a secret art; a hidden, coded practice, often carried out in darkness behind locked doors. The process of making writing is an invisible act. Paul Michel suggested this link between writing and homosexual desire.

Fiction, he said, was beautiful, unauthentic, and useless, a profoundly unnatural art, designed purely for pleasure. He described the writing of fiction, telling stories, telling lies, as a strange obsession, a compulsive habit. "

― Patricia Duncker