Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Writing seems to rob me of my being: it is a second hand mode of communication, a pallid, mechanical transcript of speech,… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
It is language which speaks in literature, in all its swarming 'polysemic' plurality, not the author himself. — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“That one can understand The Waste Land without even trying is consoling news for all students of literature.” — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“If we are inspired only by literature that reflects our own interests, all reading becomes a form of narcissism.” — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“Enjoyment is more subjective than evaluation. Whether you prefer peaches to pears is a question of taste, which is not quite true… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman other or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Reading is not a straightforward linear movement, a merely cumulative affair: our initial speculations generate a frame of reference within which to… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur Thou… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“To call for close reading, in fact, is to do more than insist on due attentiveness to the text. It inescapably suggests… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“Even in the act of fleeing modern ideologies, however, literary theory reveals its often unconscious complicity with them, betraying its elitism, sexism… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur Thou still unravished… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
The study of history and philosophy, accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for lawyers and engineers as well as for… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
To claim that science and religion pose different questions to the world is not to suggest that if the bones of Jesus were discovered… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
Virtue is something you have to get good at, like playing the trombone or tolerating bores at parties. Being a virtuous human being takes… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly not constructive. For if the… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
Reading is not a straightforward linear movement, a merely cumulative affair: our initial speculations generate a frame of reference within which to interpret what… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
“What it means to be a ‘better person’, then, must be concrete and practical — that is to say, concerned with people’s political situations… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
“What we consume now is not objects or events, but our experience of them. Just as we never need to leave our cars, so… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
“The theatre can teach us some truth, but it is the truth of the illusory nature of our existence. It can alert us to… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
“What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
