Literature Quotes
-
I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.
-
I don't want to take up literature in a money-making spirit, or be very anxious about making large profits, but selling it at a loss is another thing altogether, and an amusement I cannot well afford.
-
I did literature at university, so I had a real relationship with poetry, but they don't make many films about the world of a poet.
-
'Jane Eyre,' when I think of that book, it conjures up the best moments of college English courses. Literature is extraordinary, especially when you have a good professor.
-
I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.
-
The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.
-
I'm from Europe, and I was very aware that there are a lot of literature snobs - especially in Europe. As soon as something becomes a success, it has to be bad, and then they'll do everything they can to stab it to death.
-
The sermon is now the true poppy of literature.
-
Moriarty is arguably the most famous super-villain in terms of literature.
-
I don't think literature would be possible in a determined world. We might go through the motions but the heart would be out of it. Nobody could then 'smile darkly and ignore the howls.' Even if there were no Church to teach me this, writing two novels would do it. I think the more you write, the less inclined you will be to rely on theories like determinism. Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowledge.
-
I admire American literature, both contemporary and classic - 'Moby-Dick' is just about the best book in the world - and I admire British literature for its insistence on dealing with social class. It may have been an influence.
-
Explain to me, please, why in our literature and art so often people absolutely incompetent in this field have the final word.
-
Caribbean literature only has to be true to itself. It doesn't need colonialism or imperialism. It's always been vibrant.
-
Literature is the safe and traditional vehicle through which we learn about the world and pass on values from on generation to the next. Books save lives.
-
The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend on it for their daily bread and the highest form of literature, Poetry, brings no wealth to the singer.
-
Film is not literature - the image on screen is the information you get.
-
My novels are in the literature section as opposed to the romance section of bookstores because they're not romance novels. If I tried to have them published as romances, they'd be rejected. I write dramatic fiction; a further sub-genre would classify them as love stories.
-
I grew up to be indifferent to the distinction between literature and science, which in my teens were simply two languages for experience that I learned together.
-
Today there is a division between those who write about literature and those who create it. I, obviously, don't think that should be there.
-
We should not see print and electronic literature as in competition, but rather in conversation. The more voices that join in, the richer the dialogue is likely to be.
-
The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self.
-
What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared.
-
Most of the great works of juvenile literature are subversive in one way or another: they express ideas and emotions not generally approved of or even recognized at the time; they make fun of honored figures and piously held beliefs; and they view social pretenses with clear-eyed directness, remarking - as in Andersen's famous tale - that the emperor has no clothes.
-
I have quite a few different Bibles. Having rejected my parents' religion, I still think the King James Bible is the most important work of literature in English. None of us can help being influenced by it.
