Life, raw life, the kind we lead every day,
whether it leads us into the past or the future,
has the curious property of not seeming real enough.
We have a need, however illusive,
for a life that is more real than life.
It lies in the imagination.
Fiction would seem to be the way it is processed into reality.
If this were not so we should have little excuse for art.
Life, raw life, would be more than satisfactory in itself.
But it seems to be the nature of man to transform—
himself, if possible, and then the world around him—
and the technique of this transformation is what we call art.”
Wright Morris, The Territory Ahead
