The night-sea journey may be absurd, but here we swim, will-we nill-we, against the flood, onward and upward, toward a Shore that may not exist and c… - John Barth

[N]othing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it, from outside, by people.

A "limited imagination," as I understand it, gets things wrong. From its mere incapacity, like limited intelligence or limited physical strength, it fails to anticipate accurately and to come up with the really new or more effective idea. Never mind that even the most powerful imagination may not be literally unlimited. […] In the literary sphere, limited imagination is likely to be limited to the most conventional and obvious: a mere lack of originality in the material, the form, the treatment.

[O]ne does not write a truly contemporary novel […] merely by writing about contemporary matters. […] One writes a contemporary novel by writing it in a contemporary way.