I see a mind so full of life that it cannot pause to admire its own work. When Defoe writes of Moll, he does not stop to tell me how cruel she is or how tragic her fall; the sorrow is there, heavy and real, simply because he has lived it. He moves forward as if the story pulls him along a river where the banks are too steep to look at. This lack of hesitation makes the pain sharper than any author who stops to explain it could ever hope to make.

I ask you to read not for the lesson but for the strange, quiet truth that lies in this motion. Do not judge Defoe for not knowing what he has shown you; instead, notice how your own heart beats faster when the page rushes on without a breath. Let the story take you where it will, and trust that the silence between the words holds more of your life than any explicit teaching ever could.