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Literature Quotes
"Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince."
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"Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don't you agree?"
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"On Pilgrim's Progress: 'I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could be painted in such exquisitely delightful colors."
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"I think sometimes in literature we kind of police ourselves. I know a lot of people talked about Twilight, and they would say, oh, but the heroine, she lets this man make her decisions. And I thought, that may not be the particular fantasy or trope that works for me.But listen man, I read Wuthering Heights. I wanted me a little Heathcliff action. I mean, why can't we indulge that fantasy and also be like, "And now I would like the ERA passed, please. Also, this lipstick is fuckin' killer."
12
"Apollinaire said a poet should be 'of his time.' I say objects of the Digital Age belong in newspapers, not literature. When I read a novel, I don't want credit cards; I want cash in ducats and gold doubloons."
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"I attempt to write a good novel. Whether it is literature or not is something that will be decided by the ages, not by me and not by a pack of critics around the globe."
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"When you think about the period in which Agatha Christie's crime novels were written, they are actually quite edgy for the time."
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"Fiction, at the point of development at which it has arrived, demands from the writer a spirit of scrupulous abnegation.The only legitimate of all the irreconcilable antagonisms that make our life so enigmatic, so burdensome, so fascinating, so dangerous--so full of hope. They exist! And this is the only fundamental truth of fiction."
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"This life is not for complaint but for satisfaction."
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"The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature."
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"How many writers still dare compare a woman to Nature, like Campion? - there is a garden in her face - how lovely..."
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"It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life."
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"Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like betrayal."
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"I found it hard to think of leaving my books. They had been my elevators out of the midden, and to whom could I entrust such close friends?"
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"Considering that the modern and contemporary literature taught in most universities is largely bleak, cynical, morbid, pessimistic, misanthropic dogmatism, often written by suicidal types who sooner or later kill themselves with alcohol or drugs, or shotguns, Professor Takuda was a remarkably cheerful man."
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"Without intending to, without even knowing it, he demonstrated with his life that his father had been right when he repeated until his dying day that there was no one with more common sense, no stonecutter more obstinate, no manager so lucid or dangerous, than a poet."
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"Molly Bloom is simply the most sensuous woman in literature."
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"It had never occurred to him until then to think that literature was the best plaything that had ever been invented to make fun of people..."
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"I have a book of poetry I believe many should read but in each verse you'll discover it wasn't written for greed."
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"It is my opinion that a story worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then."
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"Some books sold because they are (said to be) great. Some are (said to be) great because they sold."
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"Faustus dared to confirm he had advanced beyond the level of a scarlet sinner - he was a conscious follower of the Prince of Darkness. The fact he could publicly project an Antichrist image with pride, having no fear of reprisal, and his seeming diabolical art of escaping all punishment when others who were considered heretics had burned at the stake for less, would certainly signal that an unnatural individual walked in their midst. It is true in many respects he assumed the role of the charlatan, yet how apropos, considering his willingness to follow his 'brother-in-law' known as the Father of Lies and deception."
11
"The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be captured in an interpretation. If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction. Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it."
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"In reality there is no kind of evidence or argument by which one can show that Shakespeare, or any other writer, is "good". Nor is there any way of definitely proving that--for instance--Warwick Beeping is "bad". Ultimately there is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion."
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"I had rather be hissed for a good verse than applauded for a bad one."
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"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:The horror! The horror!"
11
"Storytelling keeps life going."
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". . . finally, I couldn't imagine how I could live without books, and I stopped dreaming about marrying that Chinese prince. . . ."
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"The composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelting to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity."
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"Ah youth, youth! That's what happens when you go steeping your soul into Shakespeare."
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"I will try to cram these paragraphs full of facts and give them a weight and shape no greater than that of a cloud of blue butterflies."
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"Literature provides a person with a conceptual framework for recognizing human beings recurrent challenges in life. Reading good literature deepens a person's understanding of the variable ways that somebody might respond to circumstances in their world, thereby adding to their own potential intellectual and spiritual depth and expands their understanding of the nuances of their own personal behavior."
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"And she never could remember and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician's Book."
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"I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most."
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"I was arguing not that everyone should read books by ladies-though shifting the balance matters-but that maybe the whole point of reading is to be able to explore and also transcend your gender (and race and class and orientation and nationality and moment in history and age and ability) and experience being others."
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"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."
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"A finished tale may give a man immortality in the light and literary sense; but an unfinished tale suggests another immortality, more essential and more strange."
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"I'm a big believer in pairing classics with contemporary literature, so students have the opportunity to see that literature is not a cold, dead thing that happened once but instead a vibrant mode of storytelling that's been with us a long time - and will be with us, I hope, for a long time to come."
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"Most gothics are overplotted novels whose success or failure hinges on the author's ability to make you believe in the characters and partake of the mood."
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"Favoring 'resolution' the way we do, it is hard for us men to write great love stories. Why?, because we want to tell too much. We aren't satisfied unless at the end of the story the characters are lying there, panting."
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"The only way you can truly get to know an author is through the trail of ink he leaves behind him. The person you think you see is only an empty character: truth is always hidden in fiction."
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"I read to know the past, I write to express my love for the future."
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"A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest."
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"There is a dead spot in the night, that coldest, blackest time when the world has forgotten evening and dawn is not yet a promise. A time when it is far too early to arise, but so late that going to bed makes small sense."
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"Of all public figures and benefactors of mankind, no one is loved by history more than the literary patron. Napoleon was just a general of forgotten battles compared with the queen who paid for Shakespeare's meals and beer in the tavern. The statesman who in his time freed the slaves, even he has a few enemies in posterity, whereas the literary patron has none. We thank Gaius Maecenas for the nobility of soul we attribute to Virgil; but he isn't blamed for the selfishness and egocentricity that the poet possessed. The patron creates 'literature through altruism,' something not even the greatest genius can do with a pen."
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"It is neither poor handling nor the weather that turns the pages of a book a fine sepia. It is the reader's imagination."
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"Each story provides a beginning, a middle and an end, the trick is, never seperate them through the chapters or you'll miss the meaning of the entire book."
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"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."
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"People were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way."
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