Literature Quotes

the whole purport of literature...is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.

At some stages of your life you will deal with things and at others you are overwhelmed with misery and anxiety.

This was almost two hours of factual documentary. In our audience ratings, barely no one left the programme. The whole of his life is so fascinating and people kept watching for that reason.

Then again, they're not scripted and I feel it's virtually impossible to be anything but yourself when you're in front of the cameras and cooking so there is a measure of truth in what you see.

I never saw anything that would qualify as a criminal activity.

It was not possible to broadcast any of that because of an agreement between Jackson and the family [of the child]. Our legal advice was that we could not broadcast it.

Because I don't have to be careful of people's feelings when I teach literature, and I do when I'm teaching writing.

If grass were legalized, it would help our drug problem enormously.

Children now expect their parents to audition for approval.

Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.

Now when I look back to the Guildford of that time it seems far more exotic to me than Nagasaki.

The concept of industry domination of regulatory agencies was well known and documented in the literature by the 1960s.

The passions are the same in every conflict, large or small.

Self-hatred and self-love are equally self-centered.

Don't stare into a mirror when you are trying to solve a problem.

I've been missing Japanese literature so much of late.

If we think about the obvious long enough, it dissolves.

No chaos, no creation. Evidence: the kitchen at mealtime.

Few artists can afford artistic temperament.

Many gloat over their own troubles.

Listening to people keeps them entertained.

To know well the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to know well the nature of princes one must be of the people.

The elegance and the quality - the talent is always in the literature. I start with the word and I base everything on that. It doesn't make any difference to me.

An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another.

Hence it comes that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.

I don't want to be involved in endless media gossip.

Literature may be light as a cobweb, but it must be fastened down to life at the four corners.

Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.

Also, I've already won all the awards.

Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn't it such a relief to have somebody say that?

Duty is for Kant the One and All. Out of the duty of gratitude, he claims, one has to defend and esteem the ancients; and only out of duty has he become a great man.

Love can't be a metaphor anymore. If you try to make literature out of it, it doesn't work.

Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.

It is simply not part of my culture to preserve notes. I have never heard of a writer preserving his early drafts.

I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them.

Literature is ... a game, but it's a game one can put one's life into.

American literature has never been content to be just one among the many literatures of the Western World. It has always aspired to be the literature not only of a new continent but of a New World.

The criminal is trying to solve his immediate problems.

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.

Be a terror to the butchers, that they may be fair in their weight; and keep hucksters and fraudulent dealers in awe, for the same reason.

My fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered.

I think that the best literature has a core that you can't lock to a time or place but that can generate lots of meanings and translations.

About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy.

Folly always knows the answer.

When evil acts in the world it always manages to find instruments who believe that what they do is not evil but honorable.

I want to be distinguished from the rest; to tell the truth, a friend to all mankind is not a friend for me.

Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across, a critique of philosophy would be nothing less than a just reprisal.

The surest method of being incomprehensible or, moreover, to be misunderstood is to use words in their original sense; especially words from the ancient languages.

Even if you only want to write science fiction, you should also read mysteries, poetry, mainstream literature, history, biography, philosophy, and science.

All which is not prose is verse; and all which is not verse is prose.