Best 5099 quotes in «literature quotes» category

When a human being becomes so still that they begin to lose awareness of their gender, and they are simply looking into that abyss where there is no notion of self whatsoever, the world disappears. And that's really the only place to go. It's the only place to remain.

When a culture is being dumbed down as effectively as ours is, its narrative arts (literature, film, theatre) seem to vacillate between the brutal and the bland, sometimes in the same work.

When all is said and done, no literature can outdo the cynicism of real life; you won't intoxicate with one glass someone who has already drunk up a whole barrel.

When a man makes a woman his wife it's the highest compliment he can pay her – and usually it's the last.

When an actor has money he doesn't send letters, he sends telegrams.

When a man is treated like a beast, he says, 'After all, I'm human.' When he behaves like a beast, he says 'After all, I'm only human.

When an American heiress wants to buy a man, she at once crosses the Atlantic. The only really materialistic people I have ever met have been Europeans.

When an Englishman has professed his belief in the supremacy of Shakespeare amongst all poets, he feels himself excused from the general study of literature. He also feels himself excused from the particular study of Shakespeare.

When death has you by the throat, you don't mince words.

Whenever a liberal begins a statement with 'I don't know which is more frightening,' you know the answer is going to be pretty clear.

Whenever, at a party, I have been in the mood to study fools, I have always looked for a great beauty: they always gather round her like flies around a fruit stall.

When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat?

Whenever a man encounters a woman in a mood he doesn't understand, he wants to know if she's tired.

Whenever I write, I'm always thinking of the reader.

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

When I arrived at Columbia, I gave up acting and became interested in all things French. French poetry, French history, French literature.

When I came overseas, I realized that there are many ideologies and many trends, and it's also very hard to produce honest art and honest literature. I decided that I didn't want to follow any of these ideologies or trends, because that's also a kind of pressure that doesn't allow absolute freedom. So I decided that I was only going to produce works that were satisfactory to me, and that meant not following any trends and being anti-ideological.

When I got to 40 or so... I had the sense when I looked back over my life I would actually see a mess of decisions, a few of which I had thought about, some of which I had sort of stumbled on, and many that I had no control over whatsoever.

When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat.

When I look at something, it is certain that for an instant I am one with what I see.

When I read it ["Tough Guys Don't Dance"], I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.

When I talk of hearing a poet's voice speaking, I always think of it as in the presence of the man.

When I use the term "complex realism", what I'm suggesting is that the writer must be realist, always realist, but not realist in the sense we have usually used the term in literature. If reality today is different from the reality of 30 years ago, we can't keep describing reality in the same way as we did 30 years ago.

When I was 13 or 14, I started devouring novels; literature took quite a while to take me over, but it caught up just in time to save me from becoming a mathematician.

When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books.

When I was a worker I busied myself with socialist or, if you like, marxist literature.

When I was nearly twelve years old, my kind mistress sickened and died.

When I was at school, I was terrible at algebra and arithmetic, but I was always the best at English and literature. And acting, of course.

When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.

When I went through the break-up, I really looked for some kind of music, or art or literature that could say, "I've been in the same situation." I couldn't find anything at the moment, and that made me really sad.

When literature exists, perhaps we do not notice how important it is, but when it does not exist, our lives become coarsened and brutal. For this reason, I am proud of my profession, but also aware of its importance.

When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.

When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats.

When I was young, when I started to write, we were totally convinced that literature was a kind of weapon.

When literature becomes deliberately indifferent to the opposition of good and evil it betrays its function and forfeits all claim to excellence.

When literature is discovered, a revelation occurs: the joyful, exultant knowledge that anything can happen.

When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had.

When my babe was born, they said it was premature. It weighed only four pounds; but God let it live.

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

When our spelling is perfect, it's invisible. But when it's flawed, it prompts strong negative associations.

When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on.

When the drama attains a characterization which makes the play a revelation of human conduct and a dialogue which characterizes yet pleases for itself, we reach dramatic literature.

When tempest tossed, embrace chaos

When the heart speaks, its language is the same under all latitudes.

When Robert Frost was alive, I was known as the other new England poet, which is to be barely known at all.

When strength is yoked with justice, where is a mightier pair than they?

When the pressure comes, preferences give way while convictions hold firm.

When the mind withdraws into itself and dispenses with facts it makes only chaos.

When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.

When Thomas Mann arrived in California from Germany, they asked him about German literature. And he said, 'German literature is where I am.' It's really a bit grand, but if a German can afford it, I can afford it.