Do you write to figure out exactly how you feel about a subject?
Interviewer
No, I know how I feel. My feelings are the result of prejudices and convictions like everybody else’s. But I am interested in the complexity, the vulnerability of an idea. It is not “this is what I believe,” because that would not be a book, just a tract. A book is “this may be what I believe, but suppose I am wrong . . . what could it be?” Or, “I don’t know what it is, but I am interested in finding out what it might mean to me, as well as to other people.”
Toni Morrison
From An Interview with Toni Morrison: Toni Morrison, The Art of Fiction no. 134