G.K. Chesterton on Literature

I wanted to share this quote that Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout posted on his blog About Last Night.

"The public does not like bad literature. The public likes a certain kind of literature and likes that kind of literature even when it is bad better than another kind of literature even when it is good. Nor is this unreasonable; for the line between different types of literature is as real as the line between tears and laughter; and to tell people who can only get bad comedy that you have some first-class tragedy is as irrational as to offer a man who is shivering over weak warm coffee a really superior sort of ice."
G.K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens (1906)