Literature Quotes
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The greatness of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards.
T. S. Eliot
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Persecution, then, gives rise to a peculiar technique of writing, and therewith to a peculiar type of literature, in which the truth about all crucial things is presented exclusively between the lines. That literature is addressed, not to all readers, but to trustworthy and intelligent readers only.
Leo Strauss
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In European and American society, many pundits started to lament the death of literature; looking at youth who were getting more and more attracted to sitcoms - hard, adventure films and said, our children are no longer reading, or else they're reading cartoons.
Wole Soyinka
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I worked out a rather deep-dish theory defining the theater as a form of architecture rather than a form of literature.
Preston Sturges
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I belong to Russian literature, but I am an American citizen, and I think it's the best possible combination.
Joseph Brodsky
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They didn't teach Nietzsche in the philosophy department at Harvard; philosophy there was strictly analytical stuff and the poetic ramblings of Nietzsche did not belong. And see - you are teaching it in a literature class - so they must have been right.
Dean Wareham
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Literature has been the salvation of the damned, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and can perhaps in this case save the world.
John Cheever
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When I wrote about Mary Wollstonecraft, I found that here she was, in the late 18th century, going to work for the 'Analytical Review.' What was the 'Analytical Review?' It was a magazine that dealt with politics and literature.
Claire Tomalin
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This is peculiarly an age in which each of us may, if he do but search diligently, find the literature suited to his mental powers.
P. G. Wodehouse
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Literature matters so much to me I can hardly stand it.
David Shields
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I wanted to write plays. I was at Yale graduate school at the time for English literature, not for acting... I liked the idea of collaboration, and I thought if I'm gonna write plays, I should learn something about speaking the lines that I might try to write.
David Duchovny
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In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.
George Bernard Shaw
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Every man lives in two realms: the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.
James Earl Jones
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Only the more rugged mortals should attempt to keep up with current literature.
George Ade
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Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
William Stafford
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I never had to choose a subject - my subject rather chose me.
Ernest Hemingway
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Great literature rattles the mind and makes the body sing. It's an unmistakable, electric feeling, and too rare. That is what I want.
C.E. Morgan
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Criticism can be wonderful, especially in making connections in an interpretive way. But by applying theories randomly, it's an interesting exercise, but I don't think it illuminates the literature.
T. C. Boyle
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I used to think she was quite intelligent , in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about all those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they're really stupid or not.
J. D. Salinger
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Good literature erects bridges between different peoples, and by having us enjoy, suffer, or feel surprise, unites us beneath the languages, beliefs, habits, customs, and prejudices that separate us.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.
Flannery O'Connor
