G.K. Chesterton
Fairy tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.
Chaim Potok
Literature is a kind of legitimate voyeurism through the keyhole of language where you really come to know other people's lives - their anguish, their loves, their passions. Often you discover that once you dive into those lives and get below the surface, the veneer, there is a real closeness.