Literature Quotes · Page 31

Magazines all too frequently lead to books and should be regarded by the prudent as the heavy petting of literature.

— Fran Lebowitz

The only friends I have are the dead who have bequeathed their writings to me — I have no others.

— Thomas Bernhard

You can't breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence.

— Joseph Conrad

In the ongoing celebration that is literature, we are asked to imagine ourselves as other selves, for better or worse.

— Joanna Scott

Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.

— Samuel Johnson

To me, this is the singular privilege of reading literature: we are allowed to step into another's life.

— Nicole Krauss

“Literature, so far as it is Literature, is an ‘apocalypse of Nature,’ a revealing of the ‘open secret.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha have written the essential corrective to the evolutionary psychology literature...

— Stanton Peele

James Joyce is a cul-de-sac. [Ulysses is] ... an example how literature branched out and went into, lost itself in nowhere, no…

— Werner Herzog

The Grecian’s maxim would indeed be a sweeping clause in Literature; it would reduce many a giant to a pygmy; many a…

— Charles Caleb Colton

There are many women who write as they think they should write - to imitate men and make a place for themselves…

— Marguerite Duras

It's hard to know what [literature] will end up being timeless and what will be something that doesn't translate into the future,…

— Rick Riordan

“What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons; we need the most ultimate, the most fearsome, the most fearless 'Why?'…

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

I am trying to make clear through my writing something which I believe: that biography- history in general- can be literature in…

— Robert Caro

“Reading is a full contact sport; we crash up against the wave of words with all of our intellectual, imaginative, and emotional…

— Thomas C. Foster

in a sense much great literature is subversive, since its very existence implies that what matters is art, imagination, and truth. In…

— Alison Lurie

“And adab towards language means the recognition and acknowledgement of the rightful and proper place of every word in a written or…

— Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud

“Literature interprets the world, but it's also shaped by that world, and we're living through one of the greatest economic and technological…

— Lev Grossman

It seems to me that literature is giving way a little bit to the immediacy of other diversions, other forms of entertainment.…

— James Salter

The natural sciences are sometimes said to have no concern with values, nor to seek morality and goodness, and therefore belong to…

— Cyril Norman Hinshelwood

One of the interesting things about the 'Decameron' itself was it was written in the Florentine dialect as opposed to the Latin…

— Jeff Baena

“Of course, they were other things too. Sometimes they were even everything all together, but not fame, which was rooted in delusion…

— Roberto Bolaño

I am grown old, and have possibly lost a great deal of that fire, which formerly made me love fire in others…

— Lord Chesterfield

I think the more you understand myths, the more you understand the roots of our culture and the more things will resonate.…

— Rick Riordan

It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association

— William James

Literature has its own life, even in a dictatorship like the Soviet Union.

— Heinrich Boll

I belong to Russian literature, but I am an American citizen, and I think it's the best possible combination.

— Joseph Brodsky

I consider what I write to be literature. I choose the words carefully.

— Robert Metcalfe

I'd always been a kid that loved literature, reading, writing - anything to do with words - so music was just a…

— Jade Bird

In the garden of literature, the highest and the most charismatic flowers are always the quotations.

— Mehmet Murat Ildan

Literature is less involved in giving you answers and more dedicated to giving you insight.

— Junot Diaz

The greatest works of literature seem to embody both "art" and "morality".

— Joyce Carol Oates

One of the epiphanies I had was that I got into publishing because I love literature.

— Chris Pavone

“Art is the medium through which new thoughts, perspectives, and attitudes are brought into the world.”

— James Rozoff

“A writer's mind is a place where demons kill angels in disguise.”

— Ram Vignesh

I like my coffee with cream and my literature with optimism.

— Abigail Reynolds

Wherever we direct our attention to Hindu literature the notion of infinity presents itself.

— William Jones

“Literature starts by being personal, but the deeper we go inside the more we become everybody.”

— Donald Hall

In great literature, I become a thousand different men but still remain myself.

— Anonymous

Without charm there can be no fine literature, as there can be no perfect flower without fragrance.

— Arthur Symons