Saul Bellow, on what a novel is

"A novel, like a letter, should be loose, cover much ground, run swiftly, take risk of mortality and decay."

—Saul Bellow, from a 1953 letter to Bernard Malamud, quoted in The New Yorker, April 26, 2010

(found today, one day after I sat with my novel for adults and read it through one more time after many more times, questioning this very idea of looseness and playing it against the seeming demands of graspable structure)