E. M. Forster - Aspects of the Novel (1927)

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Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish! How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?

E. M. Forster
Curiosity is one of the lowest of the human faculties. You will have noticed in daily life that when people are inquisitive they nearly always have bad memories and are usually stupid at bottom.

E. M. Forster
A mirror does not develop because an historical pageant passes in front of it. It only develops when it gets a fresh coat of quicksilver — in other words, when it acquires new sensitiveness; and the novel's success lies in its own sensitiveness, not in the success of its subject matter.

E. M. Forster
As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take the examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one be a penny the stupider.

E. M. Forster
The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.

E. M. Forster
The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises, it is flat. If it does not convince, it is flat pretending to be round.
On fictional characters

E. M. Forster
If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people — a very few people, but a few novelists are among them — are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest is against such a search: organized religion, the state, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent.

E. M. Forster
Ulysses... is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud, an inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed where sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell.

E. M. Forster
If God could tell the story of the Universe, the Universe would become fictitious.

E. M. Forster
Yes – oh dear yes – the novel tells a story.

E. M. Forster
Most of us will be eclectics to this side or that according to our temperament. The human mind is not a dignified organ, and I do not see how we can exercise it sincerely except through eclecticism. And the only advice I would offer my fellow eclectics is: "Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful."

E. M. Forster
Our final experience, like our first, is conjectural. We move between two darknesses.

E. M. Forster
Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face.

E. M. Forster
In the novel we can know people perfectly, and, apart from the general pleasure of reading, we can find here a compensation for their dimness in life.

E. M. Forster