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"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."
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"I don't know where people got the idea that characters in books are supposed to be likable. Books are not in the business of creating merely likeable characters with whom you can have some simple identification with. Books are in the business of creating great stories that make you're brain go ahhbdgbdmerhbergurhbudgerbudbaaarr."
"Writers may be classified as meteors, planets, and fixed stars. They belong not to one system, one nation only, but to the universe. And just because they are so very far away, it is usually many years before their light is visible to the inhabitants of this earth."
"This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant."
"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.'"
"In our Impulsive nature to write and repulsive nature to read that has led to a decline in literary genius in our times!"
"You could fire a machine gun randomly through the pages of Lord of the Rings and never hit any women."
"I think that [William] Faulkner and I each had to escape certain particulars of our lives, and we found salvation through words. I understand the Bible story of Babel so much better now. I think that moments of extremity, desires of escape, lead us to foreign languages--not those learned in schools, but those plucked from the human heart, the searing conditions of isolation. I did not have to be limited to my biography because of words, and I shared this with Faulkner, who invented new words and punctuation and expression and worlds. He utterly reshaped the world."
"Individuals often turn to poetry, not only to glean strength and perspective from the words of others, but to give birth to their own poetic voices and to hold history accountable for the catastrophes rearranging their lives."
"Fictional people are people, too, otherwise why would we care what happens to them?"
"..holding a book but reading the empty spaces."
Explore more quotes by Lytton Strachey
"In sheer genius Pascal ranks among the very greatest writers who have lived upon this earth. And his genius was not simply artistic; it displayed itself no less in his character and in the quality of his thought."
"The old interests of aristocracy - the romance of action, the exalted passions of chivalry and war - faded into the background, and their place was taken by the refined and intimate pursuits of peace and civilization."
"English dramatic literature is, of course, dominated by Shakespeare; and it is almost inevitable that an English reader should measure the value of other poetic drama by the standards which Shakespeare has already implanted in his mind."
"Modern as the style of Pascal's writing is, his thought is deeply impregnated with the spirit of the Middle Ages. He belonged, almost equally, to the future and to the past."
"But Racine's extraordinary powers as a writer become still more obvious when we consider that besides being a great poet he is also a great psychologist."
"When Louis XIV assumed the reins of government France suddenly and wonderfully came to her maturity; it was as if the whole nation had burst into splendid flower."
"In pure literature, the writers of the eighteenth century achieved, indeed, many triumphs; but their great, their peculiar, triumphs were in the domain of thought."
"During this earlier period of his activity Voltaire seems to have been trying - half unconsciously, perhaps - to discover and to express the fundamental quality of his genius."
"When the French nation gradually came into existence among the ruins of the Roman civilization in Gaul, a new language was at the same time slowly evolved."
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