Novels are not content: Richard Flanagan, 2014 Man Booker Prize winner

"I do not share the pessimism of the age about the novel. They are one of our greatest spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual inventions. As a species it is story that distinguishes us, and one of the supreme expressions of story is the novel. Novels are not content. Nor are they are a mirror to life or an explanation of life or a guide to life.

Novels are life, or they are nothing."