In any period it is upon a very small minority that the discerning appreciation of art and literature depends ... They are still a minority, though a larger one, who are capable of endorsing such first-hand judgement by genuine personal response.

The great tradition does not brook even the possibility of libidinal gratification between the pages as an end in itself, and FR Leavis's eat up your broccoli approach to fiction emphasises this junkfood/wholefood dichotomy.

Literature is the supreme means by which you renew your sensuous and emotional life and learn a new awareness.

It is well to start by distinguishing the few really great - the major novelists who count in the same way as the major poets, in the sense that they not only change the possibilities of the art for practitioners and readers, but that they are significant in terms of the human awareness they promote awareness of the possibilities of life.