Literature Quotes

It is the nature of the writer to question the validity of his world and yet rely on his senses to describe it. From what other tension can great literature be born?

I like European and South American literature, but mostly I read nonfiction.

I think American literature is in a tedious place, horrible place. I can't even engage with it.

All good American literature is always interested in people who are ambiguously heroic, like Gatsby.

Besides," he said breezily, "were it not for misunderstandings, we would be sadly lacking in great literature." She looked at him questioningly. "Where would Romeo and Juliet be?" "Alive.

Literature has done great work for feminism - writing and reading are a practice of empathy - and great literature will continue to do so.

It's the only time my education has come in remotely handy. -on using her Russian literature studies for copying her "Van Helsing" script into Russian to acquire a Slavic accent.

The memoir by women, read by female readers, is considered a market form, not "great literature."

There's nothing political about American literature.

I think in general there's no point in going into a field like English literature if you're not going to have fun with it.

The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.

Freedom of speech doesn't guarantee great literature.

You should love literature. You should live in the library. Forget about films.

It's an absurd error to put modern English literature in the curriculum. You should read contemporary literature for pleasure or not at all. You shouldn't be taught to monkey with it.

I started reading literature at 17 or 18, and I felt this extra beat to life.

I love literature, the English language and storytelling. I also have thirty horses and seventy foxhounds to feed.

Russian literature, like colonial Canadian literature, comes with a lot of landscape backdrop.

Kingsley Amis was one of a trio of brilliant comic novelists who made English literature sparkle in the twentieth century.

American literature has always been immigrant.

Magic realism - somebody used that phrase the other day that is familiar with South American literature. That rang a bell. It resonates with me.

If England has any dignity left in the way of literature, she will forget for ever the pitiful antics of English Literature's performing flea.

As a student in England, I studied French and English literature. I read L'Etranger and the rhythm of the novel felt familiar to me - very African.

My master's degree was in English literature.

The adolescent protagonist is one of the hallmarks of American literature.

Science Fiction is a branch of children's literature.

Any literature, when it arrives at being good literature, transcends genre.

Many Europeans think that all Moroccans speak French, but no. I had to make an effort to learn it when I studied French literature at the university in Rabat.

A script is not a piece of literature, it's a process.

Literature is a beautiful way of keeping the imagination alive, of visiting worlds you would never have time to in your day-to-day life. It keeps you abreast of a wider spectrum of human activities.

The death of dictator Kim Jong-Il has cast all eyes on North Korea, a country without literature or freedom or truth.

Reality, the oppressor's tongue.

Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure.

I have respect for literature. If he found the words, if she found the words - this is a book!

You become a reader by reading the literature, not by reading the handbooks about it.

I did my homework, of course, by inhaling as much literature as was available to find, so that when it was time to shoot I could hopefully exhale [ Harriet Tubman ].

For my students who are trying to learn the craft of writing in a writing class - contemporary literature is what's most useful.

I love the fact publishers are still publishing unprofitable material. It's a challenge to the powers that be. It's saying there is a real literature in this country and we will keep publishing it.

We really are living in the era that all this sci-fi literature and cinema was centered around, but it's not anything like what we envisioned it to be. It's almost like there's too much choice.

We seem to live a culture that doesn't want blemishes. The vision of most beautiful models... airbrushed in order to be seen as perfect, infects our notion of how literature should be written.

The beauty of literature - also its limit - is that it is inescapably personal, even if you're writing science fiction.

In Bosnian, there's no distinction in literature between fiction and nonfiction; there's no word describing that.

It's not that war crimes stop as soon as a novel about them is published. Literature operates slowly, it is always inching toward bliss, never quite getting there.

I've read books in school that were written by ideological rote - they were brainwashers. Therefore, any art, any literature, that has a clearly defined political goal is repellent to me.

I write and read with the assumption that literature contains knowledge of human experience that is not available otherwise.

Literature is always something - it is either story or poetry, ideally both. That is, you always know what it is and even if the interpretation is not available, the experience of language is.

I started appreciating and valuing different things. Some things just became insufferable to me, and not just literature. I used to like horror movies and now I couldn't stand them.

Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

Thus, literature, together with language, preserves and protects a nation's soul.

Periods of rapid and fundamental change were never favourable for literature. Significant works, have nearly always and everywhere been created in periods of stability, be it good or bad.

I did literature at university, so I had a real relationship with poetry, but they don't make many films about the world of a poet.