...prose is not only a form of discourse distinct from verse; it is also an aspect of reality, its daily, concrete, momentary aspect, and the opposite of myth. This goes to the deepest conviction of every novelist: there is nothing so thoroughly disguised as the prose of life; every man seeks endlessly to transform his life into myth--seeks, so to speak to transcribe it into verse, to shroud it in verse (bad verse). If the novel is an art and not merely a "literary genre," the reason is that the discovery of prose is its ontological mission, which no art but the novel can take on entirely.
- Milan Kundera, Testaments Betrayed
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