Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Life and literature is a question of what one thrills to, and further than that no man shall ever go without putting his foot in a turd.
Literature is the human activity that make the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty.
The trouble with radicals is that they only read radical literature, and the trouble with conservatives is that they don't read anything
I always loved science. And in fact, I got a science award in high school. I mean, I loved science, but I think I loved literature more.
I'm afraid I take ... this rather clinical view of love: it's saving you from madness. I'm not so enthusiastic as other poets have been.
Money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money.
The compact between writing and walking is almost as old as literature -- a walk is only a step away from a story, and every path tells.
The test of real literature is that it will bear repetition. We read over the same pages again and again, and always with fresh delight.
What good is a writer if he can't destroy literature? And us... what good are we if we don't help as much as we can in that destruction?
The money can be decent, but I really don't recommend the work-for-hire route as an entry into publishing. Too many things can go wrong.
Every writer has to figure out what works best - and often has to select and discard different tools before they find the one that fits.
While Americans have heard of Darfur and think we should be doing more there, they aren't actually angry at the president about inaction
I feel the written word, poetry and literature is just one of the most beautiful things that human beings do. So we have to fight for it.
Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the second law of thermodynamics; i.e. it always increases.
A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.
I'm not wedded to covering the markets. I'm intrigued by the markets. If I can connect Main Street with Wall Street, then I've succeeded.
On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.
Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.
I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that Nature with which I am acquainted.
Poetry, it is often said and loudly so, is life's true mirror. But a monkey looking into a work of literature looks in vain for Socrates.
The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.
May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?
What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.
One can no longer live with people: it is too hideous and nauseating. Owners and owned, they are like the two sides of a ghastly disease.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.
If a sufficient number of management layers are superimposed on top of each other, it can be assured that disaster is not left to chance.
Be a terror to the butchers, that they may be fair in their weight; and keep hucksters and fraudulent dealers in awe, for the same reason.
Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
There's always some place to go. You don't need workshops, you don't need friends necessarily, you can be befriended by literature itself.
Poets are always the advance guard of literature; the advance guard of life. It is for this reason that their recognition comes so slowly.
I love the idea of literature as a room or series of rooms that allow you to be present as it slowly unfolds itself in all its capacities.
The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon.
We're uncomfortable about considering history as a science. It's classified as a social science, which is considered not quite scientific.
I suffer from the curse of being multi-talented. There's no doubt about it. Politics and literature have gotten in the way of songwriting.
God is each truly and exalted thing, therefore the individual himself to the highest degree. But are not nature and the world individuals?
We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
An hour's conversation on literature between two ardent minds with a common devotion to a neglected poet is a miraculous road to intimacy.
Every life is narrow. Our only escape is not to run away, but to learn to love the people we are and the world in which we find ourselves.
When I arrived at Columbia, I gave up acting and became interested in all things French. French poetry, French history, French literature.
War as Napoleon knew it just not possible any more. However, we're very unlikely to accept or recognize "world peace" even when we get it.
I certainly don't condemn anyone who listens to audiobooks. It seems to me that any way we get good literature in our brain is worthwhile.
I can't get very far away from Christianity, I can't get very far away from the angels and the saints. I work them in always, in some way.
We idolized the Beatles, except for those of us who idolized the Rolling Stones, who in those days still had many of their original teeth.
The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery.
Be not merely a man of letters! Let literature be an honorable augmentations to your arms, not constitute the coat or fill the escutcheon!
All I write about is what's happened to me and to people I know, and the better I know them, the more likely they are to be written about.
Since the last decades of the nineteenth century, revolt against the objectified world has determined the character of art and literature.
You can, when Time is ripe, swope to your feet - at your full height - at a single gesture. Ready to go where? Why... Wherever God motions.