The literature of life …

 … Truth of Intercourse. Robert Louis Stevenson. 1909-14. Essays: English and American. The Harvard Classics. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… one thing you can never make Philistine natures understand; one thing, which yet lies on the surface, remains as unseizable to their wits as a high flight of metaphysics—namely, that the business of life is mainly carried on by means of this difficult art of literature, and according to a man’s proficiency in that art shall be the freedom and the fulness of his intercourse with other men. Anybody, it is supposed, can say what he means; and, in spite of their notorious experience to the contrary, people so continue to suppose.