Quote preview background for James Wood
The vitality of literary character has less to do with dramatic action, novelistic coherence, and even plain plausibility__et alone likeability__han with a larger philosophical or metaphysical sense, our awareness that a character__ actions are deeply important, that something profound is at stake, with the author brooding over the face of that character like God over the face of the waters.
James Wood
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The vitality of literary character has less to do with dramatic action, novelistic coherence, and even plain plausibility__et alone likeability__han with a larger philosophical or metaphysical sense, our awareness that a character__ actions are deeply important, that something profound is at stake, with the author brooding over the face of that character like God over the face of the waters.

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And in the echo of that gladness, horror blooms within me. In its own strange way, it's a horror as deep as any I've experienced so far. I've succeeded in taking another human hostage, in making him urinate on himself. I made a plan to torture someone, and then I carried it out, and it satisfied me to do so. As much hurt and hell as the Wolfman has caused, I don't want to be his judge and jury, his jailer and tormentor. I don't want to be that person. I want to be good. I don't want to fall into a big, black pit of darkness, because what if I can't get out?