Anna Shannon Monroe: The story hold—the love of a story, whether a crisp anecdote or a novel; the thing that lifts one out of his surroundings into another world for a little while.
L. M. Montgomery: The deep desire in every one of us for "something better than we have known." In fiction we ask for things, not as they are, but as we feel they ought to be. This is why the oft-sneered-at "happy ending" makes the popular novel. Fairy tales are immortal—in some form or other we must have them or we die. Fiction redresses the balance of existence and gives us what we can't get in real life. This is why "romance" is, and always will be, and always should be more popular than "realism."
Frederick Moore: It is in the joy of make-believe. Animals have the same trait in some degree. Also, "Let George do it." That is, let the other fellow get shot while I enjoy the thrill but know all the time that my slippers are on and I'm safe enough.
Talbot Mundy: It reveals himself to every reader.
Kathleen Norris: Might it be that life disappoints most of us, and we like to lose ourselves in dreams where things come just a little nearer comedy, tragedy, retribution, revenge and achievement?
Grant Overton: On the part of the writer, a desire to make some one else feel what he has felt; on the part of the reader, the craving to understand something that one does not fully understand, even though one feels it and has felt it often.
Hugh Pendexter: To entertain. Once it captures the reader's interest its power is unlimited. It can teach and preach and direct the trend of national thought provided it continues to entertain. Christ taught His great truths by parables.
Clay Perry: Stimulation of the imagination; creation of a fairer, cleaner, or at least a different and more romantic world than that of every day.
Michael J. Phillips: Good fiction is a journey, all too brief, into fabled Araby—to lands of sandalwood and frankincense and myrrh and spikenard and all those other wonderful, glowing words of which I don't know the exact meaning but which lift us out of ourselves.
Lucia Mead Priest: We know nothing, truly, of mind and heart of even our nearest. The writer plays the part of Omniscience. We like to know how the other fellow feels; we like to see him messing about in situations in which we, too, have been lost—or found.