The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master--something that at times strangely wills and works for itself...Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you--the nominal artist--your share in it has been to work passively under dictates you neither delivered nor could question--that would not be uttered at your prayer, nor suppressed nor changed at your caprice. If the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as little deserve blame.
-Charlotte Bronte's preface to the 1850 edition of her sister Emily Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights
