Literary Theory Quotes

Literary Theory Quote of the day

Literature is like phosphorus: it shines with its maximum brilliance and the moment when it attempts to die.

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

Your page stands against you and says to you that you are a thief.

If the masses are not thrown a few novels , they may react by throwing up a few barricades.

The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.

I used to teach at Yale, which was at one time a center of postmodernist literary theory. Derrida was there. Paul de Man was there.

Literary theories will not make a writer write.

Literary theory has become a parody of science, generating its own arcane jargon. In the process, tragically, it discourages love of literature for its own sake.

Writers who teach tend to prefer literary theory to literature and tenure to all else. Writers who do not teach prefer the contemplation of Careers to art of any kind.

I read a lot of literary theory when I was in graduate school, especially about novels, and the best book I ever read about endings was Peter Brooks' 'Reading for the Plot. '

First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.

Any attempt to define literary theory in terms of a distinctive method is doomed to failure.

A clever schoolboy's reaction to his reading is most naturally expressed by parody or imitation.

Punctuation was, it is sad to say, invented a very long time ago. Even more frustrating, it has remained with us ever since.

The truth is not that we need the critics in order to enjoy the authors, but that we need the authors in order to enjoy the critics.