It is important to show simultaneously the exceptional and the common, the national and the universal, the realistic and the mystical. The moment a writer attempts to generalize a problem and see it on an expansive scale, he stops being a writer. It is only after his literary endeavor is completed that he may go and make a speech in support of a candidate or a loved one. His novel, however, must not be a political dissertation. The role of literature is not to analyze ideas but to describe experiences.
True literature focuses on experiences and situations.
When you read the Bible, you do not know what somebody was thinking, but you always know what the person was doing. People may sit and talk for hours about what they are thinking, but it is only through their action that we may judge their true colors. It is a heresy of our times that we use our thoughts and moods as the yardsticks in appraising almost everything that is around us. Instead of searching for words, the contemporary art of writing consists of restricting them so much that they become cliches. I refer to such words as good, bad, decent, immoral, charming, ugly, noble, abstract, cunning, talented those and many others which have been emasculated.