"When I’m disappointed by a novel, why am I disappointed? And it’s really something so simple. For it..."

“When I’m disappointed by a novel, why am I disappointed? And it’s really something so simple. For it to be a worthwhile novel, there has to be a reason for it to be in written language. In 1820, that was not one of the demands because there was no other option. That’s what there was as a medium. But now there are all these other mediums. I could hear a song. I could watch a film. I could be on the Internet. You have to give me a reason why you have written this down. It doesn’t have to have an elaborate literary structure. Some of the most simple books… you could make into a movie, but you would be losing something. It had to be in sentences. The sentences were necessary. That’s all people want from fiction, right? The feeling of it being necessary.”

- Zadie Smith (via mttbll)