" You are up against what people will always call the ways of the world - and the ways of this country, which does not kill artists so much as it kills the rationale for art, in part by insisting that the artist must be a successful member of the middle class, if not a celebrity, to be a successful artist. And that to do otherwise is to fail art, the country and yourself. Should you decide that writing is your way to serve your country, or to defend it, you are almost always writing about the one it could become. "

― Alexander Chee , How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays