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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Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation. This is what I try to tell my students: this is one great thing that literature can do - it can make us identify with situations and people far away.
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God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the West. The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare.
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Instead of personal security, citizens are afraid to walk down the street in Jerusalem.
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There's this joy that comes from sitting down to solve a problem and standing up when it's done and good. Building a company or managing people is never just done.
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Just what is meant by 'your word?' It means your conscious intention, your conscious direction, your conscious faith and acceptance that, because of what you are doing, the Power of Spirit will flow through your word in the direction you give It.
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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.
