"There are lots of authentic, moving characters in so-called systems novels, just as there are certainly deep structural ideas in some character-driven novels."

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I was starting to recognize a corner I was driving myself into: that all writing could do was refer to things that had already been written. I'm making the margin, but the margin of a book that already exists. I was having this exhilaration at, but at the same time horror of this recognition that I'd driven myself into the world of only books. This is a world of the previously written, and maybe I don't have to add to it, maybe all I can do is measure it.

— Vito Acconci