Literature Quotes

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

Many senators have developed a canny sense of what will play best for the audience.

My books always begin with a sentence and an image - not necessarily connected.

The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.

I wanted to invent myself as a fictional character. And I did, and it has caused a great deal of confusion.

Communism is a proposition to structure the world more reasonably, a proposition for changing the world. As such, we have to analyze it and, if we deem it reasonable, act upon it.

Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.

I wanted to write a new fable and see how many rules you could break.

If we make anything that lasts, it outlives us.

Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing.

And I found both literature and the church very dramatic presences in the world of the 1950s.

Today's date, the eighteenth of May, should sometime become an occasion of great international celebration, for on this day ten years ago the first Peace Conference opened at The Hague.

There must be no worse punishment to a totalitarian nation than the withdrawal of capital.

There is one criticism which cannot be leveled at interparliamentary conferences but which is applicable to a great extent to peace congresses: the meetings waste time.

There are those who believe we have need of more literature, of a large international publishing house, of a great peace newspaper, or the like. I am rather skeptical about this idea.

Whether you want to call it God or the mystery of the cosmos doesn't matter to me.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

Only towards the end of this process are any of the chapters in fully readable condition, a state of affairs that used to alarm my wife. But Joan's got used to it.

Nobody knows anything about Shakespeare the person. It's all legend, it is all rumor.

The last Hague Conference has in the meantime expressed its opinion that a body should be established which could prepare for the work involved more effectively than has hitherto proved possible.

The Pulitzer Prize is an idea; it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind.

"Little magazines" are, for the most part, the mayflies of the literary world.

Reality in our century is not something to be faced.

The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.

The world is always open, Waiting to be discovered.

Free time is a terrible thing to waste. Read a book.

The headlines are never in the news! And so, what I am saying is the news is never on the headlines

Fantasy stories will always be popular, as there are always readers who are willing to escape, freely, to the worlds that the authors create, and spend time with the characters we give life to.

Literature should be a kind of revolutionary manifesto against established morality and established society.

I must warn you that the books I like are not necessarily the ones I think are the best. I like them for various reasons not always easy to explain.

Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality.

But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful? It is. Only I do get tired.

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

Actually, I am a coward. I say only what is safe to say, and I criticise only what is permissable to criticise.

Literature, art, like civilization itself, are only accidents.

Since there is no real silence, Silence will contain all the sounds, All the words, all the languages, All knowledge, all memory.

The study of history and philosophy, accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for lawyers and engineers as well as for those who study in arts faculties.

Amazing, really, to think of what a man could achieve with the simple ability to put pen to paper and spin a decent yarn.

I woke to the sound of rain.

A book can open the mind, free the heart, and speak to the soul.

Nothing is made, nothing disappears. The same changes, at the same places, never stopping.

Sound unbound by nature becomes bounded by art.

Literature simply becomes richer after you've been fired, rejected, stranded, or had to change a few midnight diapers.

When at last I came upon the right book, the feeling was violent: it blew open a hole in me that made life more dangerous because I couldn't control what came through it.

Will the day tell its secret Before it disappears, Becomes timeless night.

Spend time for yourself, walk in solitude, refresh your mind and body so that you can spend time for others and walk with them! Spend time for yourself!

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.

Literature is that which he can not read without pain, without choking on truth.

My husband had an education. He had a degree in Literature. I married into a camp of literary types.

Well-behaved: he always speaks as if his mother might be listening.