What Doesn't Happen

"It's a novel, and once you've finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten.  What matters are the possibilities and ideas that the novel's imaginary plot communicates to us ... Fiction has the ability to show us what we don't know and what doesn't happen."

 --Javier Marias
The Infatuations


I would argue (along with Nabokov, whom Marias has apparently translated) that while ideas may ultimately be more important than plot, it is the quality of the author's artistic sensibility (keen consciousness and appreciation) that is most important of all.