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"The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order."
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"The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee."
Will
"There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them."
Truth
"We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?"
Success
"The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order."
Literature
"Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature."
Commonplace
"The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth."
Truth
"Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently."
Poet
"Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity."
God
"I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?"
Success
"Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs."
Act
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"Fiction offers the best means of understanding people different from oneself, short of experience. Actually, fiction can be lots better than experience, because it's a manageable size, it's comprehensible, while experience just steamrollers over you and you understand what happened decades later, if ever."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Books have a vital place in our culture. They are the source of ideas, of stories that engage and stretch the imagination and most importantly, inspire."
Author Name
Personal Development
"A man reading the Dickens novel wished that it might never end. Men read a Dickens story six times because they knew it so well."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Molly Bloom is simply the most sensuous woman in literature."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I am no indiscriminate novel reader. The mere trash of the common circulating library I hold in the highest contempt."
Author Name
Personal Development
"If the novels are still being read in 50 years, no one is ever going to say: 'What's great about that sixth book is that he met his deadline!' It will be about how the whole thing stands up."
Author Name
Personal Development
"It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house."
Author Name
Personal Development
"A life without books is a thirsty life, and one without poetry is...like a life without pictures."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of 'You Can't Go Home Again' and 'Look Homeward, Angel.'"
Author Name
Personal Development
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