Best 5099 quotes in «literature quotes» category

In the garden of literature, the highest and the most charismatic flowers are always the quotations.

In the history of literature there are many great enduring works which were not published in the lifetimes of the authors. If the authors had not achieved self-affirmation while writing, how could they have continued to write?

In the history of old Jewish literature there was never any basic difference between the poet and the prophet. Our ancient poetry often became law and a way of life.

In the history and literature courses I took, epistemological questions came to interest me most. What makes one explanation of the French Revolution better than another? What makes one interpretation of "Waiting for Godot" better than another? These questions led me to philosophy and then to philosophy of science.

In the game of love, the losers are more celebrated than the winners.

In the lack of judgment great harm arises, but one vote cast can set right a house.

In the literature of France Moliere occupies the same kind of position as Cervantes in that of Spain, Dante in that of Italy, and Shakespeare in that of England. His glory is more than national - it is universal.

In the native literatures of North America there aren't any novels. Instead, the major genre is myth. And myths are stories that are fundamentally about the world, not about human individuals. A myth needn't include any humans at all. If it does include them, they're usually minor characters - imaginary humans sent out like scouts to report back on what's happening in the mythworld, but not central participants in the action.

In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.

In theory it was, around now, Literature. Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.

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.

In the psychological literature, depression is often seen as a defense against sadness. But I'll take sadness any day. There is no contest. Sadness carries identification. You know where it's been and you know where it's headed. Depression carries no papers. It enters your country unannounced and uninvited. Its origins are unknown, but its destination always dead-ends in you.

In the society, where people are just parts in a larger machine, individuals are unable to develop fully.

In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy.

In these times we fight for ideas and newspapers are our fortress.

In these days a man is nobody unless his biography is kept so far posted up that it may be ready for the national breakfast-table on the morning after his demise.

In the streets through which we passed, I must own the houses in general struck me as if they were dark and gloomy, and yet at the same time they also struck me as prodigiously great and majestic.

Intimate relationships are a gold mine for literature to explore, to understand, to describe.

Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk.

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

In true prose everything must be underlined.

Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.

I often imagine that the longer he studies English literature the more the Japanese student must be astonished at the extraordinary predominance given to the passion of love both in fiction and in poetry.

I often heard about his cases and I often sat in on his trials. In the late 1960s when I was growing up I wanted to be a crusader like him but I didn't want to wear a suit and commute.

I often say I've spent more time with photography than I have with literature just in terms of hours.

I often think that eventually I'd love to do some papers... my correspondence if life calms down a bit, but I think I'd do history or English literature... I've had enough of journos.

I once bought an old car back after I sold it because I missed it so much and I had forgotten that it never ran. It was a British racing car. You know, because I just wanted it back. I could only remember what was good about it

I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.

I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books.

I personally was driven to be an actor for the love of telling a story. It was very closely linked to being a reader as a kid and being transported by literature and art. It had nothing - zero - to do with anything resembling fame.

I prefer being wrong in my own way to being right in someone else's.

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

I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written

I probably have a 20,000-word vocabulary. I'll match my wits with anyone on literature, science and the arts.

I rarely ever put my head above the rampart and see where this big lumbering behemoth called 'global literature' is going.

I rarely read or buy a book because of a review.

I read all the time... I read a lot of history books.

I read less and less. I have not forgiven books for their failure to tell me the truth and make me happy.

I read recently that the problem with stereotypes isn't that they are inaccurate, but that they're incomplete. And this captures perfectly what I think about contemporary African literature. The problem isn't that it's inaccurate, it's that it's incomplete.

I read Russian literature a lot.

I realize that I'm generalizing here, but as is often the case when I generalize, I don't care.

I really wouldn't call a lot of what's online "literature" since that word, to me, refers to a sub-genre of writing that belongs to the heavy-hitters, the canonical writers, Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Dostoevsky, Kafka, and even Toni Morrison, George Saunders, Thomas Bernhard, Sebald, Borges, DFW, e.g.

I recently did the David Letterman Show about my book. He was very serious and made no jokes and it caught me off guard a little bit. He was much more serious than some of the joke shows that journalists get on.

I really, really wanted to write. I loved language. I loved literature. I loved reading. I never read a foreign language, I'm afraid, but I loved Flaubert. I loved the 19th-century classics. I love Thomas Hardy. I wanted to be a goof on a bus, but I wanted to write more.

I regretted making a comment about Dave Eggers. I’ve never said anything about McSweeneys except that I admire what it is, and I think it’s great that they keep people interested in literature.

Ireland is a great country to die or be married in.

I receive about 10,000 letters a year from readers, and in the first year after a book is published, perhaps 5,000 letters will deal specifically with that piece of work.

I remember a moment when the Prince went back to his old school, Grammar School in Melbourne, and slightly to his horror his old music teacher produced a cello.

I remember being in the public library and my jaw just aching as I looked around at all those books I wanted to read. There just wasn't time enough to read everything I wanted to read.