Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
One truth is the swing of the sentence, the beat and poise, but down deeper it's the integrity of the writer as he matches with the language.
Literature is no one’s private ground, literature is common ground; let us trespass freely and fearlessly and find our own way for ourselves.
I'm sorry to say that far worse things have happened and the literature of the Holocaust is a witness to the capacity of the novel as a form.
The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages. In all modesty, I confess that it may be the death of literature as we know it.
When widows exclaim loudly against second marriages, I would always lay a wager than the man, If not the wedding day, is absolutely fixed on.
I think one of the saddest things that's happening to literature is that it's getting over-simplified by this diet of simple political ideas.
Robots do not hold on to life. They can't. They have nothing to hold on with - no soul, no instinct. Grass has more will to live than they do.
If England has any dignity left in the way of literature, she will forget for ever the pitiful antics of English Literature's performing flea.
Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.
The hands of every clock are shears, trimming us away scrap by scrap, and every time piece with a digital readout blinks us towards implosion.
The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don't understand it, or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it.
I don't go to concerts much. I've heard everything. When I do go to movies, I walk out half the time. As for literature, I've read everything.
It would be hard to exaggerate Ernest Hemingway's influence over American literature, but his influence on our lives is probably larger still.
Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.
The vampires have always been metaphors for me. They've always been vehicles through which I can express things I have felt very, very deeply.
There is such a thing as literary fashion, and prose and verse have been regulated by the same caprice that cuts our coats and cocks our hats.
Although spoken English doesn't obey the rules of written language, a person who doesn't know the rules thoroughly is at a great disadvantage.
One of my rules is never explain. A writer is a lot like a magician, if you explain how the trick works then a lot of the magic turns mundane.
One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.
Consciousness is an end in itself. We torture ourselves getting somewhere, and when we get there it is nowhere, for there is nowhere to get to.
I'm too shy for personal appearances, and I've found out that anytime I talk about my writing, I can't do any writing for many weeks afterward.
The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It is not sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficient for it.
I defend both the freedom of expression and society's right to counter it. I must pay the price for differing. It is the natural way of things.
His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even... knowledge, was foolproof.
Everything that is necessary is also easy. You just have to accept it. And the most necessary, the most natural matter on this planet is death.
As long as the state permits itself to interfere in the affairs of literature, literature has the right to interfere with the affairs of state.
You can't go around hoping that most people have sterling moral characters. The most you can hope for is that people will pretend that they do.
Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
Allen Ginsberg was a world authority on the writing of William Blake, and had an incredible knowledge of classic literature and world politics.
People have different views of how you deal with different issues in literature, and, frankly, long may it last that there is a range of views.
One of the main points about travelling is to develop in us a feeling of solidarity, of that oneness without which no better world is possible.
The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise, are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding.
A very wise author once said that a writer writes for himself, and then publishes for money. I write for myself and publish just for the reader
I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything, and finally that what one calls conscience is only inner vanity.
The Russian yearning for the meaning of life is the major theme of our literature, and this is the real point of our intelligentsia's existence.
Magic realism - somebody used that phrase the other day that is familiar with South American literature. That rang a bell. It resonates with me.
One of my major preoccupations is the approximation between what I say and what I do, between what I seem to be and what I am actually becoming.
When work resonates with a person, whether it is literature or film or music, then they want to know more about the artist. That's very natural.
It has been wisely observed by the greatest of modern thinkers that mankind has progressed more rapidly in every other respect than in morality.
The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and ... often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.
Certain political figures think when you call them and ask them for a comment; that you are somehow doing something that you shouldn't be doing.
Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn't it such a relief to have somebody say that?
Shakespeare wouldn't have been any good if he'd stayed in Stratford. He had to go to London to be bathed in the full current of the Renaissance.
I like literature that you respond to in some way. You laugh, you cry, you turn the light on - that's great, it's eliciting a response by proxy.
Activities that promote mind-wandering, such as reading literature, going for a walk, exercising, or listening to music, are hugely restorative.
I do not see a necessary connection between proletarian literature and some set percentage of words which bring the blushes to a maiden's cheek.
I believe there's no proverb but what is true; they are all so many sentences and maxims drawn from experience, the universal mother of sciences.
The 'open text' often emphasizes or foregrounds process, either the process of the original composition or of subsequent compositions by readers.
There are many types of participation. One can observe so intensely that one becomes part of the action, but without being an active participant.
Lastly, literature and philosophy both allow past idols to be resurrected with a frequency which would be truly distressing to a sober scientist.