The Final Test of a Novel

 
"The final test of a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define. ... The story is primitive, it reaches back to the origins of literature, before reading was discovered, and it appeals to what is primitive in us. That is why we are so unreasonable over the stories we like, and so ready to bully those who like something else."

-- E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel