Eleanor Catton Quotes
I had never read Victorian novels before going overseas. I read a handful of authors, but I had not immersed myself in the literature of the 19th century.
Quotes to Explore
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Intimate relationships are a gold mine for literature to explore, to understand, to describe.
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The Arab world also won the Nobel with me. I believe that international doors have opened, and that from now on, literate people will consider Arab literature also. We deserve that recognition.
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Secret families are really the bedrock issue of Western literature.
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I had a major bug for cities and for paintings and literature and all the things I thought went on in cities.
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When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can.
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The adolescent protagonist is one of the hallmarks of American literature.
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Perhaps no other body of literature is as subject to political pressures from within the community as gay fiction.
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It is no exaggeration to say that the English Bible is, next to Shakespeare, the greatest work in English literature, and that it will have much more influence than even Shakespeare upon the written and spoken language of the English race.
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The idea behind a dish - the delight and the surprise - makes a difference. Great literature surprises and delights, and provokes us. It isn't just 'Here's the facts - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.' It's how you tell it.
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There are works of literature whose influence is strong but indirect because it is mediated through the whole of the culture rather than immediately through imitation. Wordsworth is the case that comes to mind.
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Life develops, changes, is in motion. The forms of literature are not.
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Literature is memory written down. All literature is memory.
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Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?
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So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world.
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Wherever you look there are inspirations, books, literature, paintings, landscapes, everything. Just living is an inspiration.
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When I first stepped into literature twenty-five years ago, I wanted to work on behalf of the oppressed, the working masses, and it seemed to me, mistakenly, that I would not find them among the Jews.
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Chinatown is tremendously interesting... It's a part of the city that hasn't really been explored in crime literature or in any general literature. It's as though Chinatown didn't exist. People write about New York without mentioning Chinatown at all.
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The moral backbone of literature is about that whole question of memory. To my mind it seems clear that those who have no memory have the much greater chance to lead happy lives.
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To me, steampunk and urban fantasy are naturally hinged together. And I think that's because I love the early gothic Victorian literature, and both things spring from that movement.
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I find the middle classes kind of boring. The middle class has kind of been beaten like a dead horse by fictional writers. It's old news, and literature is supposed to bring new news, and for me, I feel I have to go as far out as I can to try and tell the kind of stories I want to tell.
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I'm not crazy. But I am different. I'm still learning about myself.
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Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens outthe widest vistas. It 'bakes no bread', as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage.
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I had never read Victorian novels before going overseas. I read a handful of authors, but I had not immersed myself in the literature of the 19th century.
