Julian Barnes

How easily everyone understood what was real and what was not. The world in which a benighted young sollicitor was sentenced to penal servitude in Portland... the world in which Holmes unravelled another mystery beyond the powers of Lestrade and his colleagues... or the world beyond, the world behind the closed door, through which Touie had effortlessly slipped. Some people believed in only one of these worlds, some in two, a few in all three. Why did people imagine that progress consisted in believing in less, rather than believing in more, in opening yourself to more of the universe?