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Nabakov on Storytelling

Literature was born not the day when a boy crying wolf, wolf came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels: literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him. That the poor little fellow because he lied too often was finally eaten up by a real beast is quite incidental. But here is what is important. Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature.

"The arrows of adverse criticism cannot scratch, let alone pierce, the shield of what disappointed archers call my 'self-assurance.'" Background and context: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/01/18/vladimir-nabokov-james-mossman-interview/