“The writing of a novel is taking life as it already exists, not to report it but to make an object, toward the end that the finished work might contain this life inside it and offer it to the reader. The essence will not be, of course, the same thing as the raw material; it is not even of the same family of things. The novel is something that never was before and will not be again.”
—Eudora Welty

Do not have much to say today that Ms. Welty has not said in this quote. A novel simply turns the world we are experiencing on its head. It takes it and makes it better, and worse.

Yes, that is my quote. Yes, you may use it.