Best 147 quotes in «literary quotes» category

A slippery fish, flashing scales in the water and a noble fighter on the line, but dull as lead at the bottom of the boat.

A smile is just the contortion of a face

. . . a statement that is repugnant to one's beliefs can be as true as one that is pleasurable.

A woman must prefer her liberty over a man. To be happy, she must. A man to be happy, however, must yearn for his woman more than his liberty. This is the rightful order.

A writer is lost when he grows interested in such questions as 'what is art?' and 'what is an artist's duty?

Bearing witness from the sides of the room, ten or more lepers shouted at the bizarre scene, “Diable! Diable!” And then chants of some sort, or prayers, followed by more shouts of “Diable!” They were hurling these words at Moreau like stones.

Because we were not in our country, we could not use our own languages, and so when we spoke our voices came out bruised. When we talked, our tongues thrashed madly in our mouths, staggered like drunken men. Because we were not using our languages we said things we did not mean; what we really wanted to say remained folded inside. trapped. In America we did not always have the words. It was only when were were by ourselves that we spoke in our real voices. When we were alone we summoned the horses of our languages and mounted their backs and galloped past skyscrapers. Always, we were reluctant to come back.

CONGRATULATIONS DL Havlin! Your entry, "There are No Lights in Naples", an unpublished short fiction - flash fiction genre category, is a finalist for the 2016 Royal Palm Literary Awards competition!

Clear the blue skies aery dome,rosy the sun’s cheek,he clouds unfastened sway,the smiling gush of creek,the tiny fishes awake from sleep, the unseen moves of the dryad,ha spirit in me driven!

Could a literary life be referred to with the iambic pentameter of, say, harnessing wind power, transplanting hearts or saving the whales. Or did it necessitate the sombre and monotonous dirge of software, priority banking or turbine building.

Darkness crept through. Shadows pried at doors, teased dull edges of recollections that never quite took hold. Memories that would have shriveled under the blinding sun of daylight. And reason.

Era crédula, aunque lo negara, seguía creyendo en cuentos de hadas, por más que la vida trataba de decirme a gritos que las cosas no funcionaban de esa manera.

During the Government’s recent overhaul of GCSEs, I was asked to join a consultative group advising on the English Literature syllabus. It quickly became clear that the minister wanted to prescribe two Shakespeare plays for every 16-year-old in the land. I argued, to the contrary, that there should be one Shakespeare play and one play by anybody except Shakespeare. It cannot be in Shakespeare’s interest for teenagers to associate him with compulsion, for his plays and his alone to have the dreaded status of set books.

Especially on rainy nights like this, they would congregate under the bridge, all the boys from nowhere, the boys who lived nowhere, who had nowhere else to go.

For a moment Carl tried to picture everything in his mind, and then it happened. Somewhere inside of him, where cause and effect were not weighted against each other, and where logic and explanations never challenged consciousness, in that place where thoughts could live freely and played out against each other - right there in that spot, things fell into place, and he understood how it all fitted together

Fate bring two people together and it is love's job to keep them there

Every story reads on multiple levels to convey a greater, more intricate message, and it's the reader's role to tap into that.

Evil should not be, Detective Vera. Truly never can be. But in defining it as such, an inherent human bond with negativity confirms its very existence. Its mere acknowledgement cancels its credibility. Evil is nothing—the lack of anything of substance— made concrete as a balance to everything else. Evil is not, yet it is a part of each human, because humans welcome its participation in their lives. They speak of it in anger or disgust, fear or even wonder— the most appropriate response— giving it a stronger foundation with every passing thought it distorts. Though within their pliable minds, they welcome it with the glee of the ignorant, nurturing the unthinkable, thinking the unimaginable, imagining the most horrid, abysmal designs, embellishing them with an insidious veracity until evil is as substantial a reality as their next breath. I strive for something else, beyond evil’s claustrophobic clutches. I strive to transcend evil by becoming pure nothing. I strive as my followers strived.” He paused, his ideology a cancer, spreading… “I am, yet I strive to not be. Do you understand, comrade?” His tone suggested fellowship, disciples of the same obscene religion. ...

...forever meant different things to people at different times. They could imagine what infinity looked and felt like as much as they wanted, but could never truly grasp its meaning nor bear its full weight.

He doesn't tell Aunt Fostalina she looks good, like I've heard other people do; he tells her she looks like sunrise.

Good children do taste better, but there are so few of them. If you can be satisfied with naughty children, you will always have food on the table. They are never in short supply.

Gossip is not adopted by the bored. It is an art of discourse adopted by those who have experienced absolutely nothing thrilling in their lives; they have never really fallen in love or casually spoken to a complete stranger, and they never dreamt of doing anything extraordinary. They are a group of people with dull lives and souls.

He takes a draw on a cigarette, blows out a smoky ghost. I reach to catch the phantom in my hands, but it eludes me. I've been trying to catch a ghost for as long as I can remember.

Herald Loomis, you shining! You shining like new money!

Her eyes were a rich dark brown that were so deep, they reminded me of my sleepless nights, awake, staring into complete darkness. I felt compelled to look deeper, searching for something inside her, but her soul was covered and her eyes would not show me.

His fierce appreciation of female beauty, the unrelenting desire he felt for their company, the pleasure he both derived and sought to give, had led him in and out of quite a few bedroom doors.

He was now Fergus Escondido-Smith: poet, mystic, and sage extraordinaire.

His eyesight wasn’t as keen as it had been, but he knew a changing mind when he saw it.

How stark everything became, at the end, all the wishes for one's children distilled by the world's swift cruelty into the desperate hope that death would take them fast.

How easily such a thing can become a mania, how the most normal and sensible of women once this passion to be thin is upon them, can lose completely their sense of balance and proportion and spend years dealing with this madness.

I believe a family just isn’t complete without skeletons. My dearest momma clean bit off my daddy’s nose right around the time they divorced.

I am a bomb but I mean you no harm. That I still am here to tell this, is a miracle: I was deployed on May 15, 1957, but I didn’t go off because a British nuclear engineer, a young father, developed qualms after seeing pictures of native children marveling at the mushrooms in the sky, and sabotaged me. I could see why during that short drop before I hit the atoll: the island looks like god’s knuckles in a bathtub, the ocean is beautifully translucent, corals glow underwater, a dead city of bones, allowing a glimpse into a white netherworld. I met the water and fell a few feet into a chromatic cemetery. The longer I lie here, listening to my still functioning electronic innards, the more afraid I grow of detonating after all this time. I don’t share your gods, but I pray I shall die a silent death.

I believe in moderation. But I wouldn't overdo it.

I believe the visionaries and true reflections of society will be rewarded after their lives. Those being rewarded now are giving the public what it needs now, usually applauding its current state and clearing consciences.

I can't bear literary snobbery.

If Audrey sensed what he was contemplating, her silence did not let on. He turned from the window and found her looking at him with a flawless poker face. It may have been attentiveness and curiosity to hear what he would say next, or perhaps she was expecting from him what women throughout the ages, often against their better judgment, had expected of men.

I’d loved women who were old and who were young; those extra kilos and large rumps, and others so thin there was barely even skin to pinch, and every time I held them, I worried I would snap them in two. But for all of these: where they had merited my love was in their delicious smell. Scent is such a powerful tool of attraction, that if a woman has this tool perfectly tuned, she needs no other. I will forgive her a large nose, a cleft lip, even crossed-eyes; and I’ll bathe in the jouissance of her intoxicating odour.

I don’t know any writers who don’t drink.

I don’t care if the streets of Heaven are gold or not as long as they’re clean and I don’t have to sweep them.

If these walls could talk, the buildings would stutter, wouldn't remember their names.

I hardly know her but whenever I see her I lose my mind. I know I should run away, but I can’t. “That’s called sexual attraction, honey,” Max said. “It’s very nice. But be careful. It can burn you bad. Believe me I know.

I had long ago determined that I would devote my life to literary scholarship. Not, let me emphasise, the dry-as-dust scholarship of academe, the crushing orthodoxy to be found in universities, but rather the recondite scholarship that is a journey into the unknown. I refer, chiefly, to those dead authors whose works savour of the uncanny and the marvellous, authors whose unique perspectives are beyond the self-stultifying purview of the modern critical mania for so-called realism. For my part I chose the mysteries, and the hierophant of mystery was an obscure author called Arthur Machen.

I needed words, lots of words to think about while I was going about the rest of the day. And I didn't want anything affected. I wanted nothing to do with those Romance languages. I wanted clipped words, full of common sense. Thoughts to wear beneath my thoughts. Allow, express, oath, vow, dismay, matter, splash, mollify. I liked those words. I liked saying them. I still do.

{Letter from Fawcett to the great Robert Ingersoll, 1894} I do so wish, that, in all these big questions, literary men would take you more for a guide than they do, or seem to do. You have, of course, an immense constituency; but your love of letters and your deeply poetic spirit render you worthy of a far greater reverence and respect from writers than it seems to me that you receive. I want the brilliancy of your thought to penetrate our literature profoundly and permanently. But of course that will come. The younger generation of writers cannot escape you any more than the air they breath. You will, indeed, be the air they breath, -- and hence, in many cases, if not all, their inspiration. Especially should the poets love you and sit at your feet. If you die before you see the change, I believe that those who now love you and survive you will see how much of the mere pietistic rubbish in modern poetry has been gradually yet surely swept away by the mighty besom of your fearless and noble intellect.

I know I will always be attracted to the unknown as it does often verify what I am or what else I could be.

I live within the world of books.

I thought you'd be interested in these things as a government man. Ain't you mixed up in the prices of things we eat or something? Ain't that it? Making them more costly or something. Making the grits cost more and the grunts less?

In America we saw more food than we had seen in all our lives and we were so happy we rummaged through the dustbins of our souls to retrieve the stained, broken pieces of God.

I sit on a foldaway chair at the lakeside, sipping hot cocoa and admiring the sunset behind distant clouds, pondering my next novel, which will be more truth than fiction. More memoir than tale. It will begin at the Third Garden and end here at Little Loch Broom, floating on a leaf over clear water, a bared soul visible to all those who would desire a glimpse of a childhood most extraordinary.

In telling a story one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty, so that he may not be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately.