“[Fiction] doesn’t have to do anything. It just has to be there for the fierce pleasure we take in doing it, and the different kind of pleasure that’s taken in reading something that’s durable and made to last, as well as beautiful in and of itself. Something that throws off these sparks—a persistent and steady glow, however dim.”
Raymond Carver, from a 1983 Paris Review interview (quoted in “A Day in the Life of Hannah Tinti,” which is definitely worth a read).