Best 5099 quotes in «literature quotes» category

It's the best way of telling the truth; it's a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts. Beyond that … [it's] delight in, and play with, language; also, a curiously intimate way of communicating with people whom you will never meet.

It symbolizes a spear, and in this sorry world the symbol is the thing.

It [The Great Gatsby] has interested and excited me more than any new novel I have seen, either English or American, for a number of years....it seems to me to be the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James.

It was a time I slept in many rooms, called myself by many names. I wandered through the quarters of the city like alluvium wanders the river banks. I knew every kind of joy, ascents of every hue. Mine was the twilight and the morning. Mine was a world of rooftops and love songs.

It was hard to decide on a literature course. Everything the professors said seemed to be somehow beside the point. You wanted to know why Anna had to die, and instead they told you that 19th century Russian landowners felt conflicted about whether they were really a part of Europe. The implication was that it was somehow naive to want to talk about anything interesting, or to think that you would ever know anything important.

It was hard to love a woman that always made you feel so wishful.

It was held that the six great arts – visual art (including architecture and photography), drama, dance, music, film and literature – form a family of related, if largely autonomous, practices: they all work through the aesthetic, all address the imagination, and all are concerned with the symbolic embodiment of human meaning.

It was in that tree that I learned to read, filled with the passions that can only come to the bookish, grasping, very young, bewildered by almost all of what I read, sweating in the attempt to understand a world of adults I fled from in real life but desperately wanted to join in books. (I did not connect the grown men and women in literature with the grown men and women I saw around me. They were, to me, another species.)

It was. It will never be again. Remember.

It wasn’t playing both sides of the fence – it was betting against yourself but still playing to win – and it encapsulated everything absurd and paradoxical that I loved about the French.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were going directly to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being, received, for good or for evil, in superlative degree of comparison only.

It was wonderful flirting with him, all the razor-edged literary banter, like Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. A battle of wit, and a test, too.

it would be fairer to say I have traveled widely, without ever leaving my own native soil, I've traveled, one might say, through literature, each time I've opened a book the pages echoed with a noise like the dip of a paddle in midstream, and throughout my odyssey I never crossed a single border, and so never had to produce a passport, I'd just pick a destination at random, setting my prejudices firmly to one side, and be welcomed with open arms in places swarming with weird and wonderful characters

Ivanov had been a party member since 1902. Back then he had tried to write stories in the manner of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, or rather he had tried to plagiarize them without much success, which led him, after long reflection (a whole summer night), to the astute decision that he should write in the manner of Odoevsky and Lazhechnikov. Fifty percent Odoevsky and fifty percent Lazhecknikov. This went over well, in part because readers, their memories mostly faulty, had forgotten poor Odoevsky (1803-1869) and poor Lazhechnikov (1792-1869), who died the same year, and in part because literary criticism, as keen as ever, neither extrapolated nor made the connection nor noticed a thing.

I've always felt that good writing does not have to be literary.

I’ve only been to jail a few times, but in several different countries, at that. No, I've only been to jail a few times. But I still claim the ability to write a "serious" novel.

I wake up and look at that bridge, try to count the red taillights I see heading east every morning, a kind of rosary as I pray for another crisis to dwarf the one defining us right now.

I want all the books on the shelves. I want the books with dinosaur words like nigger that show the skeletons in our national closet. I want books with the word cunt as well as the word kike. Words don't scare me. Suppressing them does.

I walked around the library looking for books. I pulled them off the shelves, one by one. But they were all tricks. They were very dull. There were pages and pages of words that didn't say anything. Or if they did say something they took too long to say it and by the time they said it you already were too tired to have it matter at all. I tried book after book. Surely, out of all those books, there was one.

I wanted to write the most beautiful poem but that is impossible; the world has written its own.

I want to be able to do anything with words: handle slashing, flaming descriptions like Wells, and use the paradox with the clarity of Samuel Butler, the breadth of Bernard Shaw and the wit of Oscar Wilde, I want to do the wide sultry heavens of Conrad, the rolled-gold sundowns and crazy-quilt skies of Hitchens and Kipling as well as the pastel dawns and twilights of Chesterton. All that is by way of example. As a matter of fact I am a professed literary thief, hot after the best methods of every writer in my generation.

I want to give just a slight indication of the influence the book has had. I knew that George Orwell, in his second novel, A Clergyman's Daughter, published in 1935, had borrowed from Joyce for his nighttime scene in Trafalgar Square, where Deafie and Charlie and Snouter and Mr. Tallboys and The Kike and Mrs. Bendigo and the rest of the bums and losers keep up a barrage of song snatches, fractured prayers, curses, and crackpot reminiscences. But only on my most recent reading of Ulysses did I discover, in the middle of the long and intricate mock-Shakespeare scene at the National Library, the line 'Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson's bed, clergyman's daughter.' So now I think Orwell quarried his title from there, too.

I want to see what life makes of you. One thing is certain - it can't spoil you. It may pull you about horribly, but I defy it to break you up.

I was asked: You write some intimate scenes in your stories on You Me & Stories but they are not explicit. Why so? Have you considered writing an erotica? Why would I want to write a sex scene in detail, when the actual fun is in guiding the reader, helping them visualise and letting their imagination run wild! To answer the second part of the question - No. I am happy with the way I write now. There is a very thin line between sensual and erotica. I prefer staying on the sensual side.

I was too much of a Bronx kid to read Emerson or Hawthorne.

I was hungry when I left Pyongyang. I wasn't hungry just for a bookshop that sold books that weren't about Fat Man and Little Boy. I wasn't ravenous just for a newspaper that had no pictures of F.M. and L.B. I wasn't starving just for a TV program or a piece of music or theater or cinema that wasn't cultist and hero-worshiping. I was hungry. I got off the North Korean plane in Shenyang, one of the provincial capitals of Manchuria, and the airport buffet looked like a cornucopia. I fell on the food, only to find that I couldn't do it justice, because my stomach had shrunk. And as a foreign tourist in North Korea, under the care of vigilant minders who wanted me to see only the best, I had enjoyed the finest fare available.

I was working in silence seeking no appreciation or respect from any one. And it is always the silence from which great literature is born.

What are you reading? isn’t a simple question when asked with genuine curiosity; it’s really a way of asking, Who are you now and who are you becoming?

I will always know the glory of the beautiful and rare, as they will know security from labour and prayer. As they will hear the laughter of the children they gave life, I will know the torments of the song born under knife.

I watched the shadow of our plane hastening below us across hedges and fences, rows of poplars and canals … Nowhere, however, was a single human being to be seen. No matter whether one is flying over Newfoundland or the sea of lights that stretches from Boston to Philadelphia after nightfall, over the Arabian deserts which gleam like mother-of-pearl, over the Ruhr or the city of Frankfurt, it is as though there were no people, only the things they have made and in which they are hiding. One sees the places where they live and the roads that link them, one sees the smoke rising from their houses and factories, one sees the vehicles in which they sit, but one sees not the people themselves. And yet they are present everywhere upon the face of the earth, extending their dominion by the hour, moving around the honeycombs of towering buildings and tied into networks of a complexity that goes far beyond the power of any one individual to imagine, from the thousands of hoists and winches that once worked the South African diamond mines to the floors of today's stock and commodity exchanges, through which the global tides of information flow without cease. If we view ourselves from a great height, it is frightening to realize how little we know about our species, our purpose and our end, I thought, as we crossed the coastline and flew out over the jelly-green sea.

I will never see the day where I choose to fall upon my own sword of refuge. In knowing this, I also know that you will never ultimately defeat me; for my life is my own, and I will see to it accordingly.

I will read long books and the journals of dead writers. I will feel closer to them than I ever felt to people I used to know before I withdrew from the world. It will be sweet and cool this friendship of mine with dead poets, for I won’t have to touch them or answer their questions. They will talk to me and not expect me to answer. And I’ll get sleepy listening to their voices explaining the mysteries to me. I’ll fall asleep with the book still in my fingers, and it will rain.

I wish I’d known those words on the day I watched those German troops land, plane-load after plane-load of them—and come off ships down in the harbor! All I could think of was damn them, damn them, over and over. If I could have thought the words "the bright day is done and we are for the dark," I’d have been consoled somehow and ready to go out and contend with circumstance—instead of my heart sinking to my shoes.

I wished I hadn’t majored in women filling their pockets with stones and sticking their heads into ovens. Maybe tomorrow the pinhole would widen and I would want to be a marine biologist.

I went to work, but the mood of the book would not die; it lingered, coloring everything I saw, heard, did. I now felt that I knew what the white man were feeling. Merely because I had read a book that had spoken of how they lived and thought, I identified myself with that book.

I will find you another long-forgotten Queen Mab poem in no time. Depend on it. I refuse to let Cody or anyone else know more about English Literature than me. So calm yourself, Elfish, and let an expert take over.

I wished, first of all, to buy my way into people's good graces with my book so that, in subsequent personal contact, I would find the ground already prepared, and, I reasoned, if I succeeded in implanting in their soules a favorable image of me, this image would in turn shape me; and so, willy-nilly, I would become mature.

linear brains can't curve a thought.

Line in nature is not found; Unit and universe are round; In vain produced, all rays return; Evil will bless, and ice will burn.

Listen O’ westward winds,chime a requiem for my languid thoughts,for they are fruitless by the lone hours,and count not my tears, O’ streams in my stupor;and these low melancholy strings, the soul shall tune!

Listen well, as I speak of my upsurge; For I’m a lover, without a lover I am a flame, without a combustion I am a novice, without a mentor I am a healer, without a wounded I am a winner, without a trophy I’m a captain, without a devotee And above all, I’m alone – not lonely

Literasi bukan hanya sekadar membaca teks, melainkan pula diartikan sebagai kemampuan membaca keadaan sekitar.

Literature allows us to cross the borders -- as imaginary as they are indispensable -- which circumscribe and define our selves. Reading, we allow other people to enter us -- and if we make room for them so willingly, it's because we know them already. The novel celebrates our miraculous capacity to recognize others in ourselves, and ourselves in others.

Literature and film in my opinion are like saloons where bottles have no labels. I want to taste each one myself and figure out which is what. If I'm denied this by labelling, then my entertainment is considerably lessened.

Literature cannot be imposed; it must be discovered.

Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.

Literature differs from life in that life is amorphously full of detail, and rarely directs us toward it, wheras literature teaches us to notice. Literature makes us better noticers of life; we get to practice on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature; which in turn makes us better readers of life.

Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.

Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: "You can't deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow." The other defense against things in general is silence as we muster strength for a fresh leap forward. But we must impose that silence on ourselves, not have it imposed on us, not even by death. To choose hardship for ourselves is our only defense against that hardship. This is what is meant by accepting suffering. Not being resigned to it, but using it as a springboard. Controlling the effect of the blow. Those who, by their very nature, can suffer completely, utterly, have an advantage. That is how we can disarm the power of suffering, make it our own creation, our own choice; submit to it. A justification for suicide. Charity has no place in all this. Unless, perhaps, this act of violence is in itself the truest form of charity?

Literature is an invitation to people to discover the world of others and the world of others is the best source to understand and to improve our own world!