The Man Who Invented Fiction Quotes

“Aristotle stipulates that “the poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose … The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.”
― William Egginton, The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World

“How did he do it? How did this adventurer and soldier; crippled in the service of his king and country; kidnapped and held in slavery in the dungeons of Algiers for five long years; who returned to his country hoping in vain to be granted a post worthy of his name and sacrifices; who was reduced to collecting taxes for an unpopular government; who was sued and sent to prison on multiple occasions—how did this man invent a way of writing that would be so different from what came before it and have such a profound impact on what would follow?”
― William Egginton, The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World