" The mainstream reader knows what he wants, and that is entertainment with a veneer of "the real," the challenge of a problem that he can solve, a soupcon of flattery, and a dollop of sex (just as long as it's grey). What such a reader doesn't want is an invitation to change his life, or a clear exposition of how rotten the system is, a la Henry Miller, because as my friend says, that is depressing. To write outside the mainstream, to diagnose the system's ills, to lay your heart and your spirit out on the page, is lonely work, but it feels lonelier still to think you did it all for nothing. "

― John Burnside