Best 5099 quotes in «literature quotes» category

It is the second job of literature to create myth. But its first job is to destroy it.

It is the test of a novel writer's art that he conceal his snake-in-the-grass; but the reader may be sure that it is always there.

It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.

It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe; but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese.

It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.

It is true that women tend to be more identified with their bodies because in this crazy world, both men and women measure women's value as human beings in relationship to their physical appearance.

It is unfair to blame man too fiercely for being pugnacious; he learned the habit from Nature.

It is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having syphilis and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

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

It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.

It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page.

It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly, those who dispute with one another at last agree.

It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all becomes fiction as soon as you write it down.

I try to teach my heart not to want things it cant have.

It's a battle to be seen in the world of advertisers and in the world of business as a serious force.

It's a great thing when you feel that you recognize yourself, deeply and movingly, in a work of literature.

Its a heartening fact about the human race that utopian fiction precedes dystopian fiction in the evolution of literature.

It’s all right to hesitate if you then go ahead.

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.

It's easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.

It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.

It seems to me as I reviewed the literature that, with few exceptions, the more confident were the prescriptions about how to behave with ethics and integrity, the further removed was the author from the life and work of the everyday manager.

It's easy to get a loan unless you need it.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

It's hard being visible, so I've made myself invisible.

It seems to me to make as much sense to talk about literature as a large-scale human phenomenon without bringing in evolution as it does to engage in cosmology while you're thinking the universe is still geocentric.

It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.

It's funny how you never think about the women you've had. It's always the ones who get away that you can't forget.

It's harder to get hold of the world. It's harder to understand the world, to encompass the literature necessary for the information.

It's hard to know what [literature] will end up being timeless and what will be something that doesn't translate into the future, especially with the way we're evolving since our culture is changing so fast.

It's like breathing in and out to me. It's like having a conversation with someone who isn't there. Because it has to be addressed to somebody - not a particular person, or very rarely.

It's my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.

It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.

It's no accident that my first novel was called Americana. This was a private declaration of independence, a statement of my intention to use the whole picture, the whole culture.

It's not a good thing to be friends with people you're covering. There's just no point in doing it. It's tempting, but they're not going to consider you their friend anyway. They just know that you're somebody that can do something for them.

It's not a slam at you when people are rude, it's a slam at the people they've met before.

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.

It’s one thing if everyone wears the same shoes or drinks the same soda. But the world of literature is the last place in which globalization should mean homogeneity.

It's not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.

It's still true that literary works by women, gays, and writers of color are often framed as specific, rather than universal, small rather than big, personal or particular rather than socially significant.

It's possible to become so comfortable with one's style and structure that one ceases to grow.

It's politely assumed that democracy is a means of containing and restraining violence. But violence comes not from genes but from ideas

It's so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked.

It's terrible. How can we tell the world who the real Michael Jackson is?

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.

It's the most righteous, which of course is not the same thing as the most profitable.

It's the good loser who finally loses out.

It's such a Bore Being always Poor.

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.