The importance of novels and short stories in our society is great. Fiction supplies the only philosophy that many readers know; it establishes their ethical, social, and material standards; it confirms them in their prejudices or opens their minds to a wider world.
Ectoplasm and Ostrogoths
Captain Haddock to slave-trader:
Sheer off, filibuster!… Out of my sight, you gallows bird!… Baboon!… Carpet-seller!… Paranoiac!… Pockmark!… Cannibal!…
[slave-trader departs]
Duck-billed platypus!… Jellied-eel!… Bashi-bazouk!… Anthropophagus!… Cercopithecus!… Psychopath!… Er…
Tintin:
No good, Captain. He’s too far away now…
Haddock:
That’s what you think! He hasn’t heard the last of me! [dashes off]
Away With Cosiness!
“Away with cosiness [Gemütlichkeit]! Only where cosiness ends, does humanity begin.”
Adolf Behne