Robert W. Chambers: Amusement.
Roy P. Churchill: Voyage into new seas. The elemental pull toward new experiences.
Carl Clausen: Ask a college professor who teaches fiction writing but does not write himself.
Courtney Ryley Cooper: Fiction is the world of our dreams come true. For the clerk in the store, his dream is adventure. For the girl in love, it is the Prince Charming. For the discouraged man, it is the yarn of the fellow who fights past obstacles. We like fiction because in that we see the things we would like to do become realities in the person we easily can imagine ourselves to be. Did you ever see a reader wanting to be the villain of a story? Hardly.
Arthur Crabb: Among the upper classes, a means of passing away an otherwise unoccupied hour or two; to the middle and lower classes it is either a stimulant to a poor imagination or takes the place of imagination entirely.
Mary Stewart Cutting: It expresses what we would like to express.
Elmer Davis: Relief from troubles. This, I think, is as true of realism as of the so-called "literature of escape." Realism at least turns your attention from your own worries to other people's.
William Harper Dean: The elemental hold of fiction, if I get your point, is through humanity's inner craving to see itself mirrored, to have its tragedies and triumphs interpreted, so that each of us may say, "Oh, that's me—my life! I have lived that, felt it. I'm glad some one understands."
Harris Dickson: Perhaps, that each of us is his brother's keeper and likes to hear what Bud is doing. Some of us love small-town gossip, some crime yarns, some revel in the poetic, the romantic, the imaginative. But from the dawn of time the Teller of Tales has been a force—like the troubadour whose songs were legal tender for his welcome everywhere.
Captain Dingle: Wonder, I imagine.