"I don't see any reason to think that the particular kind of literary writer who's dedicated to entertaining as well as to writing without cliché would not continue to have a shot at finding a commercial-sized audience. And the possibility of that larger audience is important."

"Read the first five pages. Count clichés. If you find one, the buzzer goes off: it's not a serious novel. A serious novelist notices clichés and eliminates them. The serious novelist doesn't write 'quiet as a mouse' or paint the world in clichéd moral terms. You could almost just substitute the adjective 'cliché-free' for 'serious.'"