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"Every book is a great action and every great action is a book!"
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"This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be their task to translate the elements of the poem or play or novel or story into something else. Sometimes a writer will be so uneasy before the naked power of his art that he will install within the work itself - albeit with a little shyness, a touch of the good taste of irony - the clear and explicit interpretation of it. Thomas Mann is an example of such an overcooperative author. In the case of more stubborn authors, the critic is only too happy to perform the job."

"Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination, and of the heart."

"A book is as private and consensual as sex."

"For the narrative to exist, so that it could be read and reread even if I was taken away. Stories outlive their writers all the time. We know plenty about Goethe and Charles Dickens from what they chose to tell, even though they have been dead for years."

"I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various."

"I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature."

"I suppose all fictional characters, especially in adventure or heroic fiction, at the end of the day are our dreams about ourselves. And sometimes they can be really revealing."

"When you think about the period in which Agatha Christie's crime novels were written, they are actually quite edgy for the time."

"Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we as readers have a strong subconscious wish to find them incredible."
Explore more quotes by Martin Luther

"Satan, the god of all dissension stirs up daily new sects. And last of all which of all others I should have foreseen or once suspected. He has raised up a sect such as teach that men should not be terrified by the Law but gently exhorted by the preaching of the grace of Christ."

"The devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles, flees before the sound of music almost as much as before the Word of God....Music is a gift and grace of God, not an invention of men. Thus it drives out the devil and makes people cheerful. Then one forgets all wrath, impurity, and other devices."

"If he have faith, the believer cannot be restrained. He betrays himself. He breaks out. He confesses and teaches this gospel to the people at the risk of life itself."

"Human reason is like a drunken man on horseback set it up on one side and it tumbles over on the other."

"In the bonds of Death He lay Who for our offense was slain But the Lord is risen today Christ hath brought us life again Wherefore let us all rejoice Singing loud with cheerful voice Hallelujah!"

"True humility does not know that it is humble. If it did, it would be proud from the contemplation of so fine a virtue."
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