Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech.
The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.
Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way round.
Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that.
Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.
Men who pass most comfortably through this world are those who possess good digestions and hard hearts.
There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor a more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.
If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.
The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.
Literature: proclaiming in front of everyone what one is careful to conceal from one's immediate circle
Where was I going? I puzzled and wondered about it til I actually enjoyed the puzzlement and wondering.
Someday I suspect, when Jesus has definitely got me for a sunbeam, my works may be adequately assessed.
The world is bad but not without hope. It is only hopeless when you look at it from an ideal viewpoint.
To rehearse imaginary conversations on paper is called literature. To do so out loud is called madness.
The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said.
The advantage of literature over life is that its characters are clearly defined, and act consistently.
The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.
The beautification of the world is not a work of nature, but a work of art, then it involves an artist.
To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.
Keyholes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than all other holes in this world put together.
The tradition of Russian literature is also an eastern tradition of learning poetry and prose by heart.
While the 1980 book was being serialized in the Sunday Times, Charles attacked it through the Observer.
I've always liked being relatively obscure. I feel that's where I belong, that's where my work belongs.
I wasn't good with authority, went to lots of schools, didn't like the fact that there was no autonomy.
Sometimes the archaism of the language when it's spoken is why we are all in love with the Irish today.
Psychoanalysis is out, under a therapeutic disguise, to do away entirely with the moral faculty in man.
A person who knows nothing about literature may be an ignoramus, but many people don't mind being that.
There are three things men can do with women: love them, suffer for them, or turn them into literature.
If one discards the Bible as being unreliable, then he must discard almost all literature of antiquity.
If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.
It is also said of me that I now and then contradict myself. Yes, I improve wonderfully as time goes on.
Every human society possesses a mythology which is inherited, transmitted and diversified by literature.
Even more important maybe, or equally more important at least, is they don't have to scrap for a living.
I am not opposed to e-readers. Any technology that encourages the reading of literature is a good thing.
There is something about that moment, when literature becomes accessible, and a door of the world opens.
I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests.
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.
The Thriller album is still the biggest album of all time. That is still returning huge royalty cheques.
To me, this is the singular privilege of reading literature: we are allowed to step into another's life.
It is easy to get everything you want, provided you first learn to do without the things you cannot get.
In literature as in ethics, there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle. Aristocracy isolates us.
My favorite thing is still journalism. I'm almost 50. This has been my life ever since I was in college.
Wine has lit up for me the pages of literature, and revealed in life romance lurking in the commonplace.
It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies; seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.
When you try to unravel something you've written, you belittle it in a way. It was created as a mystery.
This is the worst President ever. He [George W. Bush] is the worst President in all of American history.
Never relinquish clothing to a hotel valet without first specifically telling him that you want it back.
It is, perhaps, a better thing to be valued only as an object of passion than never to be valued at all.
As far as I'm concerned, the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning.
We've seen in the last half century an incredible shift. This is just an extraordinary time to be alive.