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Literature Quotes
"The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible."
20
"Literature is claimed to be a mirror of the world, I said, "but the Outlanders are fooling themselves. The BookWorld is as orderly as people in the RealWorld *hope* their own world to be-it isn't a mirror, it's an aspiration."
20
"I think one ages and one dates. I tend to have a good deal of difficulty in liking some of the new poets."
20
"Nonfiction that smells like fiction is neither."
20
"Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerales."
20
"I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time. It was the early summer of 1945, and we walked through the streets of a Barcelona trapped beneath ashen skies as dawn poured over Rambla de Santa Monica in a wreath of liquid copper."
20
"That is a secondary teacher conception - the writer as an observer."
19
"Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape, on the day the first book was written."
19
"No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid."
19
"Tardiness in literature can make me nervous."
19
"The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communicate."
19
"Don't ask to live in tranquil times. Literature doesn't grow there."
19
"Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem."
19
"All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool."
19
"The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read."
19
"I've been an inveterate reader of literary magazines since I was a teenager. There are always discoveries. You're sitting in your easy chair, reading; you realize you've read a story or a group of poems four times, and you know, Yes, I want to go farther with this writer."
19
"All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare."
19
"Writing had never become routine for him, but remained a constant surprise. He was always surprised at how much fun it was, once it all got moving. And never failed to be surprised at how bloody hard it was. It was like having an intense, frustrating love affair with a capricious, gorgeous, and often mean-spirited woman.He loved every moment of it."
19
"Novels are just another kind of cross-dressing, aren't they?"
19
"What kind of life can you have in a house without books?"
19
"He seemed to hasten the retreat of departing light by his very presence; the setting sun dipped sharply, as though fleeing before our nigger; a black mist emanated from him; a subtle and dismal influence; a something cold and gloomy that floated out and settled on all the faces like a mourning veil. The circle broke up. The joy of laughter died on stiffened lips."
19
"Every man's memory is his private literature."
19
"Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile."
19
"I love the smell of old books, Mandy sighed, inhaling deeply with the book pressed against her face. The yellow pages smelled of wood and paper mills and mothballs."
19
"By a route obscure and lonelyHaunted by ill angels only,Where an eidolon, named NIGHT,On a black throne reigns upright,I have reached these lands but newlyFrom an ultimate dim Thule --From a wild, weird clime that lieth, sublime,Out of SPACE, out of TIME."
19
"While the goal of a book is to create a positive emotional experience for the reader, the goal of the opening is to set the stage, to pull the reader in."
19
"I don't hate humanity and I'm not interested in people who do. Although, it's funny, actually, some of my favorite writers really do. Like Martin Amis. My dirty secret. 'London Fields' is one of my favorite books ever. And it's indefensible! But he's so funny... I forgive him everything."
19
"The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper - whether little or great, it belongs to Literature."
18
"All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one."
18
"I have, I admit, a low tolerance for detached chronicling and cool analysis."
18
"Literature is air, and I'm suffocating in mediocrity."
18
"American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter."
18
"In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that."
18
"I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal."
18
"A book that furnishes no quotations is no book - it is a plaything."
18
"When I found the book was condemned as soon as the book was printed, or rather as soon as it was set up ready to print, I held it in plates for a year nearly, waiting to see what would come out of all this discussion."
18
"There are numerous cases of that, where one of our writers discovers another writer whom he likes, and we then take that book on. So it's a very close relationship. We can do that because we're so small."
18
"Did it matter? George thought perhaps it did, and not in terms of finding truth or of any hope of discovering what really happened at any given moment. There were as many truths - overlapping, stewed together - as there were tellers. The truth mattered less than story's life. A story forgotten died. A story remembered not only lived, but grew."
18
"Fiction is Truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story."
18
"Literature is a toil and a snare, a curse that bites deep."
18
"SF is the literature of the theoretically possible, and F is the literature of the impossible."
18
"Medora Manson, in her prosperous days, inaugurated a "literary salon"; but it had soon died out owing to the reluctance of the literary to frequent it."
18
"Grayson: Fiction is just a lie anyway.Brianna: But it's not - it's a different kind of truth - it would be your truth at the time of the writing, wouldn't it?"
18
"Great novels are above all great fairy tales . . . literature does not tell the truth but makes it up."
18
"Literature, the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions."
18
"In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importance compared with their "large loves and heavenly charities."
18
"Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning."
18
"Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
18
"And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."
18
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