The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book. — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
Literature begins with the possible model of experience, and what it produces is the literary model we call the classic. — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
Failure to grasp centrifugal meaning is incomplete reading; failure to grasp centripetal meaning is incompetent reading. — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
Writing: I certainly do rewrite my central myth in every book, and would never read or trust any writer who did not… — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
The world of literature is a world where there is no reality except that of the human imagination. — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
The tremendous efficiency and economy of the book has once again demonstrated itself. It's the world's most patient medium. — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
Literature is a human apocalypse, man's revelation to man, and criticism is not a body of adjudications, but the awareness of that… — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
Beauty and truth may be attributes of good writing, but if the writer deliberately aims at truth, he is likely to find… — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
The simple point is that literature belongs to the world man constructs, not to the world he sees; to his home, not… — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
A writers desire to write can only have come from previous experience of literature, and he'll start by imitating whatever he's read,… — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
No human society is too primitive to have some kind of literature. The only thing is that primitive literature hasn't yet become… — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
The kind of problem that literature raises is not the kind that you ever 'solve'. Whether my answers are any good or… — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
Literature as a whole is not an aggregate of exhibits with red and blue ribbons attached to them, like a cat-show, but… — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
For the serious mediocre writer convention makes him sound like a lot of other people; for the popular writer it gives him… — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
In literature, questions of fact or truth are subordinated to the primary literary aims of producing a structure of words for its… — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
“Literature keeps presenting the most vicious things to us an entertainment, but what it appeals to is not any pleasure of these… — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
To bring anything really to life in literature we can't be lifelike: we have to be literature-like — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
Literature speaks the language of the imagination, and the study of literature is supposed to train and improve the imagination. — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
I soon realized that a student of English literature who does not know the Bible does not understand a good deal of what is… — Northrop Frye Copy Share
Our country has shown a lack of will to resist its own disintegration .. . Canada is practically the only country left in the… — Northrop Frye Copy Share
“The only thing that words can do with any real precision or accuracy is hang together. Accuracy of description in language is not possible… — Northrop Frye Copy Share
The bedrock of doubt is the total nothingness of death. Death is a leveler, not because everybody dies, but because nobody understands what death… — Northrop Frye Copy Share
Physics is an organized body of knowledge about nature, and a student of it says that he is learning physics, not nature. Art, like… — Northrop Frye Copy Share
Literature as a whole is not an aggregate of exhibits with red and blue ribbons attached to them, like a cat-show, but the range… — Northrop Frye Copy Share
One doesn't bother to believe the credible: the credible is believed already, by definition. There's no adventure of the mind. — Northrop Frye Copy Share
Culture's essential service to a religion is to destroy intellectual idolatry, the recurrent tendency in religion to replace the object of its worship with… — Northrop Frye Copy Share
“Tendintele autoritate ale conservatorismului trebuie corectate prin mituri ale libertatii, in vreme ce un simt conservator al ordinii trebuie sa tempereze tendintele liberalismului spre… — Northrop Frye Copy Share
Literature is a human apocalypse, man's revelation to man, and criticism is not a body of adjudications, but the awareness of that revelation, the… — Northrop Frye Copy Share
“The particular myth that's been organizing this talk, and in a way the whole series, is the story of the Tower of Babel in… — Northrop Frye Copy Share
Every human society possesses a mythology which is inherited, transmitted and diversified by literature. — Northrop Frye Copy Share
Science begins with the world we have to live in, accepting its data and trying to explain its laws. From there, it moves toward… — Northrop Frye Copy Share
In the world of the imagination, anything goes that's imaginatively possible, but nothing really happens. — Northrop Frye Copy Share
