Reminded today of this quote from Robert Louis Stevenson. For anyone who has ever been told to write what they know. (Stevenson is writing in response to Henry James, who in his own essay ‘The Art of Fiction’ called Treasure Island “delightful”, but, Stevenson reports…) “He cannot criticise the author, as he goes, “because […] I have been a child, but I have never been on a quest for buried treasure.” Here is, indeed a wilful paradox; for if he has never been on a quest for buried treasure, it can be demonstrated that he has never been a child. There never was a child (unless Master James) but has hunted gold, and been a pirate, and a military commander, and a bandit of the mountains; but as fought, and suffered shipwreck and prison, and imbrued its little hands in gore, and gallantly retrieved the lost battle, and triumphantly protected innocence and beauty.” (From Stevenson’s essay ‘A Humble Remonstrance’.)