"The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is:"
About this Quote
The unfinished clause, “But in real and lasting writing the character is,” matters as much as whatever noun she’s about to land on. The sentence breaks where a manifesto should crystallize, forcing the reader to supply the missing principle: character is not a mouthpiece or a chess piece. Character is interior weather. Character is contradiction. Character is what speech and action fail to confess. Park’s subtext is that durable fiction is made in the negative space - the motives characters won’t name, the desires they misread, the private bargains struck beneath the dialogue.
Contextually, Park comes out of a tradition of unsentimental social realism, attentive to class, hardship, and the ordinary pressures that bend people into shape. In that kind of writing, “simply say and do” isn’t neutral; it’s evasive. It lets the author skip the moral and psychological accounting. Park is arguing for the hard labor of implication: the slow construction of a person so specific you can feel the cost of every choice. “Lasting” isn’t about elegance; it’s about depth that keeps paying interest after the plot is over.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Park, Ruth. (2026, February 18). The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is:. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-world-is-full-of-novels-in-which-characters-75536/
Chicago Style
Park, Ruth. "The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is:." FixQuotes. February 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-world-is-full-of-novels-in-which-characters-75536/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is:." FixQuotes, 18 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-world-is-full-of-novels-in-which-characters-75536/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2026.
