There are many. I found this compelling, from the writer Karl Ove Knausgaard:
Saying what is self-evident is repetitive; the repeated is the already-known, and the already-known is the enemy of literature, its nemesis and true opposite. The self-evident confirms; literature challenges the confirmed. It is easy to describe what I see; it is easy to describe what I think. But why do I see what I see? Why do I think what I think? That is harder to grasp. For what I see is the world; what I think is me. What literature can do is establish an outside.
Source: The Reenchanted World: On finding mystery in the digital age, Harper’s Magazine, June 2025
Akshat Rathi 