Your little handful of facts

"I like biography far better than fiction myself: fiction is too free. In biography you have your little handful of facts, little bits of a puzzle, and you sit and think, and fit 'em together this way and that, and get up and throw 'em down and say damn, and go out for a walk. And it's real soothing; and when done gives an idea of finish to the writer that is very peacful. Of course it's not really so finished as quite a rotten novel; it always has and always must have the incurable illogicalities of life about it, the fathoms of slack and miles of tedium. Still, that's where the fun comes in; and when you have at last managed to shut up the castle spectre (of dulness) the very outside of his door looks beautiful by contast."

Robert Louis Stevenson, 18 June 1893
warm acknowledgements to Michael Caines for finding this gem (fathoms of slack!)