Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I had relationships with men as well as women. I wasn't choosing; I didn't think I had to.
I give lectures for money, but all the money goes to charity. So, I make no money from it.
The art of newspaper paragraphing is to stroke a platitude until it purrs like an epigram.
He taught me literature, and he actually taught me how to read. He was my personal mentor.
At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman.
The modern state no longer has anything but rights; it does not recognize duties any more.
He's arm'd without that's innocent within; Be this thy Screen, and this thy Wall of Brass.
There must be no worse punishment to a totalitarian nation than the withdrawal of capital.
Innocence is thought charming because it offers delightful possibilities for exploitation.
Literature must be an analysis of experience and a synthesis of the findings into a unity.
Be able to defend your arguments in a rational way. Otherwise, all you have is an opinion.
The critic's hankering to be law-giver rather than servant of literature is irrepressible.
The relation between life and literature - a final antimony - is one of mutual plagiarism.
Attention-deficit disorders seem to abound in modern society, and we don't know the cause.
In poetry, even discourse about doubts must be cast in a discourse that cannot be doubted.
...life every now and then becomes literature...as if life had been made and not happened.
The Ten Commandments have never been replaced as the moral basis upon which society rests.
The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.
Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.
I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it.
Mysteries are feminine; they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined.
Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.
I and life: The case was settled chivalrously. The opponents parted without having made up.
Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough for literature. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.
The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate.
Know what to do if you feel faint or dizzy, especially if you might fall and hit your head.
Literature is less involved in giving you answers and more dedicated to giving you insight.
Literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor.
The demand for absolute purity of genres is becoming nowadays an anachronism in literature.
Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
The most exciting periods of literature have always been those when the critics were great.
There are many occasions in literature in which telling is far more effective than showing.
What I do deny is that you can build any enduring society without some such mystical ethos.
Mysteries I read for fun, so I will probably never write one, for fear of spoiling the fun.
Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.
I hadn't planned on going to law school. I wanted to study 19th-century Russian literature.
I never liked to hunt, you know. There was always the danger of having a horse fall on you.
If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble.
Love can't be a metaphor anymore. If you try to make literature out of it, it doesn't work.
I was too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security and too tired for an affair.
We may seem competent, but by the end of next century there will be new deserts, new ruins.
Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.
I think it's dangerous to be optimistic. Things could go terribly wrong virtually overnight
Do not let a flattering woman coax and wheedle you and deceive you; she is after your barn.
True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing but what is necessary.
I was much more interested in literature than I was in art. I just got into art by mistake.
News events cannot be controlled, nor can newscasts be mapped out like entertainment shows.
We cannot live, suffer or die for somebody else, for suffering is too precious to be shared.
There is no human bliss equal to twelve hours of work with only six hours in which to do it.