Literature Quotes

Much contemporary verse reads like failed short-short stories rather than failed poetry.

As writers, the world is not about individual expression entirely because we are producing works of literature and getting them out into the world.

Real literature, like travel, is always a surprise.

There is even - as with no other game - a fascinating detective literature, a wry commentary on the human comedy, implicit in the book of rules.

We must stop chasing dollars, stop lying, stop cheating, stop ignoring art, literature, and all the refining agencies and instrumentalities of civilization.

Literature is, in fact, the fruit of leisure.

Literature is about telling stories.

The battlefield is first and foremost horrible stenches, not sights, not sounds, but stenches. They don't travel well into literature.

I'm not sure I'm happy with words such as "task" or "role" when they are attached to literature.

Literature belongs first and foremost to the language in which it is being written.

I prefer to talk about the gift of literature rather than its role or task.

In the same way in which music is made of notes and a painting is made of lines of colors, the matter of literature are words.

Literature exists inside the language. It's made of words.

Literature is not made of ideas and it's not made of concepts, of psychological analysis. It's made of words.

Poetry is the most concentrated form of literature; it is the most emotionalized and powerful way in which thought can be presented.

The thing I love about reporting is being able to blend in with any group, whether that's neo-Nazis or pedophiles.

If someone knows me and likes me or my work, they're more likely to allow me to tell their story. But it also cuts the other way.

For the twenty million Americans who are hungry tonight, for the homeless freezing tonight, literature is as useless as a knowledge of astronomy.

It is with fine sentiments that bad literature is made. Descend to the bottom of the well if you wish to see the stars.

People are discontent; men are troubled; and the literature is excellent.

We have been very conditioned by the cultures that we come from and are usually very identified with the particular gender that we happen to be a member of.

We're making far too big a deal out of our sexual preferences. It's just another form of narcissism, and I think it can be a big problem and a tremendous obstacle.

It is, perhaps, a better thing to be valued only as an object of passion than never to be valued at all.

I'm not going to be lectured to.

They've hit us and we've got to hit back hard, and I'm not just talking about the terrorists.

I once wanted to be a personage. Now I am comfortable being a person.

One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights [...] a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer.

For me, literature is a way of enlarging myself by learning about people who are not like me.

We have to become saints. We have to become like Christ. Anything less is simply not enough.

You can look at the New York Times Bestseller List and you can be pretty sure that the writers on that list don't know each other very well.

I can't get very far away from Christianity, I can't get very far away from the angels and the saints. I work them in always, in some way.

I do want to go another way - to write something completely different.

I broke with my religion in college.

When I write something, every word of it is meant. I can't say it enough.

I'm fascinated by almost any mythology that I can get my hands on...

I feel like an outsider, and I always will feel like one. I've always felt that I wasn't a member of any particular group.

I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.

I consciously try to end my novels at a point where I won't have to wonder about my characters ever again.

I'm too shy for personal appearances, and I've found out that anytime I talk about my writing, I can't do any writing for many weeks afterward.

I forget a book as soon as I finish writing it, which is not always a good thing

I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.

When I read, I'm purely a reader

I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.

My writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages.

Representative institutions are as much a part of the true Briton as his language and his literature.

The body of literature, with its limits and edges, exists outside some people and inside others. Only after the writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature.

In literary history, generation follows generation in a rage.

As we are all solipsists, and all die, the world dies with us. Only very minor literature aims at apocalypse.

It was delightful but, of course, it was pretty insulting to my professional reputation.

While the 1980 book was being serialized in the Sunday Times, Charles attacked it through the Observer.