That quote expresses Tolstoy's frustration not about the size of his novels but about the importance people attached to them. In his old age Tolstoy wanted peop

That quote expresses Tolstoy's frustration not about the size of his novels but about the importance people attached to them. In his old age Tolstoy wanted people to focus on moral concerns, not artistic ones. For old Tolstoy, War and Peace was empty of significance, but certainly not because it was too long—that would be the last thing he cared about by 1908! Also, please don't use inflammatory language on HN. "Calls me a liar" is about the most inflammatory way you could put that. My comment was hardly about you, and "lie" implies something evil, which is way over the top. I'm merely saying that one of your points was mistaken. Is there a word for the opposite of inflammatory language? That's what we're trying to do on HN, even at the cost—this took me years to figure out—of being a little more boring.