from cees nooteboom's in the dutch mountains:

kundera and d'ors wrote novels. plato wrote down a myth that aristophanes had told during the symposium. andersen wrote fairy tales. novels describe how life is because it can be so. in a myth an impossible answer is given to unanswerable questions. something happens there that never happens anywhere. myths are examples, novels are pictures, fairy tales are beloved lies told by people who find the failed myth of life unbearable. in myths people live forever. in fairy tales they live happily ever after. in novels there is, at the end of the "ever after," the beginning of unhappiness, and usually even before. in myths everything is solved in some way or other; in novels nothing is ever solved, and in fairy tales the solution is postponed, but if it ever takes place it will be outside the scope of the fairy tale. that is the lie.