Quoting Anne Rice from her Facebook page the other day:

“I suspect that, to write a great book an author must embrace the idea that the book may be imperfect, even careless, even a failure in a conventional scene.  The drive to write a perfect book can result in falsification.  The authentic voice of an author is likely too powerful for perfection; it may override organization; it may seek to reach a level of brilliance that an orderly book can’t contain.  And it is the authentic voice that is the true voice and the voice that can achieve greatness.  The controlled and edited voice may be the small voice that must be ignored.   —  Why am I thinking about all this? Because I am reading Tolstoy and studying the critics of Tolstoy; and returning again and again to the grandeur and sublime thrills and truths of “War and Peace” which is surely imperfect as a novel —  and the imperfection doesn’t matter at all. –Anne Rice