Literature Quotes

Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.

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.

A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.

Conflict is the soul of literature.

Children make your life important.

A theatre, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.

We're uncomfortable about considering history as a science. It's classified as a social science, which is considered not quite scientific.

Choose a subject equal to your abilities; think carefully what your shoulders may refuse, and what they are capable of bearing.

Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the second law of thermodynamics; i.e. it always increases.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.

I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.

Literature is news that stays news.

Literature is always personal, always one man's vision of the world, one man's experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others.

Different authors have different points of view. You can't just say, 'I believe in the Bible.

Silence may be as variously shaded as speech.

That's the great thing about literature -- it makes the world less lonely.

Many a thief is a better man than many a clergyman, and miles nearer to the gate of the kingdom.

How beautiful maleness is, if it finds its right expression.

The prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.

Don't rule out working with your hands. It does not preclude using your head.

Love is a reciprocal torture.

Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.

The old fun thing is when somebody typed up the first chapter of War and Peace. And then made a precis of the rest of it and sent it out and only one publisher recognized it.

I find it easy to forgive the man who invented a devilish instrument like dynamite, but how can one ever forgive the diabolical mind that invented the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.

'Tis no sin to cheat the devil.

I know I'll be under a spotlight, I know I'll be under the microscope.

Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.

Persuasion is often more effectual than force.

Literature must be an analysis of experience and a synthesis of the findings into a unity.

Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our deeds.

The yoke you wear determines the burden you bear.

Abortion politics have distracted all sides from what is really essential: a major aid campaign to improve midwifery, prenatal care and emergency obstetric services in poor countries.

Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation.

Loving once and only once is possible - anything is possible.

Albert Einstein when asked what he considered to be the most powerful force in the universe answered: Compound interest!

We wanted to make sure that the film covered the main issues of his life. Musicianship, appearance.

We are all born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy.

Anything in literature, including memory, is second-hand.

I can work in films as long as the story doesn't have a realistic nature. If I'm working with an allegory, a fantasy, it can be developed in synthetic terms.

There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.

Literature is the thought of thinking souls.

No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

Lots of times you have to pretend to join a parade in which you're not really interested in order to get where you're going.

Squash - that's not exercise, it's flagellation.

It's the most righteous, which of course is not the same thing as the most profitable.

What's breaking into a bank compared with founding a bank?

Be able to sneeze without sounding ridiculous. That means neither stifling yourself or spraying your immediate vicinity.