--- title: "11 Writing Literature Quotes by 9 authors" description: "Browse 11 Writing Literature quotes by 9 authors. Discover the best Writing Literature sayings and thoughts." image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3a9/naomi-shihab-nye-4185_believe_i-think-the-job-of-writing-and-literatur_2120798.png" --- > [I think the job of writing and literature is to encourage each one of us to believe that we're living in a…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/naomi-shihab-nye/i-think-the-job-of-writing-and-literature-is-to-encourage-each-one-of/) [Naomi Shihab Nye](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/naomi-shihab-nye/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3a9/naomi-shihab-nye-4185_believe_i-think-the-job-of-writing-and-literatur_2120798.png) > [Great fiction can often present moral messages with greater power and clarity than instructional writing - since literature, after all, penetrates not…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/charles-colson/great-fiction-can-often-present-moral-messages-with-greater-power-and/) [Charles Colson](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/charles-colson/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c85/charles-colson-7127_books_great-fiction-can-often-present-moral-me_2779607.jpg) > [I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/stephen-greenblatt/i-think-the-writing-of-literature-should-give-pleasure-what-else/) [Stephen Greenblatt](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/stephen-greenblatt/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/cfc/stephen-greenblatt-10786_books_i-think-the-writing-of-literature-should_86402.jpg) > [“The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it. Life gets your blood going, and it smells good. Writing is…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/annie-dillard/the-written-word-is-weak-many-people-prefer-life-to-it-life-gets-your/) [Annie Dillard](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/annie-dillard/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f0f/annie-dillard-509_books_the-written-word-is-weak-many-people-pre_347574.jpg) > [“Theory sometimes seems to me a way of taking revenge on literature—the critic masters the text and rewrites it in his own…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/adam-kirsch/theory-sometimes-seems-to-me-a-way-of-taking-revenge-on-literature/) [Adam Kirsch](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/adam-kirsch/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b79/adam-kirsch-38562_academic-writing_theory-sometimes-seems-to-me-a-way-of-ta_3234520.png) > [The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it. Life gets your blood going, & it smells good. Writing is…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/annie-dillard/the-written-word-is-weak-many-people-prefer-life-to-it-life-gets-your-2/) [Annie Dillard](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/annie-dillard/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d20/annie-dillard-509_appeals_the-written-word-is-weak-many-people-pre_752833.jpg) > [How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ernest-hemingway/how-simple-the-writing-of-literature-would-be-if-it-were-only/) [Ernest Hemingway](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ernest-hemingway/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a7f/ernest-hemingway-83_books_how-simple-the-writing-of-literature-wou_3109607.jpg) > [“To my mind, nothing is as important as good writing, because in literature, the walls between people and cultures are broken down,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/richard-bausch/to-my-mind-nothing-is-as-important-as-good-writing-because-in-2/) [Richard Bausch](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/richard-bausch/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/171/richard-bausch-30288_books_to-my-mind-nothing-is-as-important-as-go_1228562.jpg) > [I grew up with the idealistic notion that writing and literature were noble causes. I had no inkling, no sense of what…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/oscar-hijuelos/i-grew-up-with-the-idealistic-notion-that-writing-and-literature-were/) [Oscar Hijuelos](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/oscar-hijuelos/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b76/oscar-hijuelos-24619_being-sincere_i-grew-up-with-the-idealistic-notion-tha_1711393.jpg) > [To my mind, nothing is as important as good writing, because in literature, the walls between people and cultures are broken down,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/richard-bausch/to-my-mind-nothing-is-as-important-as-good-writing-because-in/) [Richard Bausch](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/richard-bausch/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/cd2/richard-bausch-30288_art_to-my-mind-nothing-is-as-important-as-go_247585.jpg) > [“The only distinguishing characteristic of a literature professor at the millennium was that he or she wrote about other people's writing. Apart…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/james-hynes/the-only-distinguishing-characteristic-of-a-literature-professor-at/) [James Hynes](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/james-hynes/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f90/james-hynes-70886_books_the-only-distinguishing-characteristic-o_1965439.jpg) ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "ItemList", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/writing-literature/#itemlist", "name": "Writing Literature Quotes", "numberOfItems": 11, "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I think the job of writing and literature is to encourage each one of us to believe that we're living in a story.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Naomi Shihab Nye" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/naomi-shihab-nye/i-think-the-job-of-writing-and-literature-is-to-encourage-each-one-of/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3a9/naomi-shihab-nye-4185_believe_i-think-the-job-of-writing-and-literatur_2120798.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3a9/naomi-shihab-nye-4185_believe_i-think-the-job-of-writing-and-literatur_2120798.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3a9/naomi-shihab-nye-4185_believe_i-think-the-job-of-writing-and-literatur_2120798.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“I think the job of writing and literature is to encourage each one of us to believe that we're living in a…” — Naomi Shihab Nye", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Great fiction can often present moral messages with greater power and clarity than instructional writing - since literature, after all, penetrates not just the intellect, but the imagination.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Charles Colson" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/charles-colson/great-fiction-can-often-present-moral-messages-with-greater-power-and/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c85/charles-colson-7127_books_great-fiction-can-often-present-moral-me_2779607.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c85/charles-colson-7127_books_great-fiction-can-often-present-moral-me_2779607.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c85/charles-colson-7127_books_great-fiction-can-often-present-moral-me_2779607.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Great fiction can often present moral messages with greater power and clarity than instructional writing…” — Charles Colson", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. 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Writing is mere writing, literature is mere.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Annie Dillard" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/annie-dillard/the-written-word-is-weak-many-people-prefer-life-to-it-life-gets-your/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f0f/annie-dillard-509_books_the-written-word-is-weak-many-people-pre_347574.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f0f/annie-dillard-509_books_the-written-word-is-weak-many-people-pre_347574.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f0f/annie-dillard-509_books_the-written-word-is-weak-many-people-pre_347574.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it. 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The aggressive ungainliness of so much academic writing about literature is a sign of this—it is unliterary writing about literature, which should be a contradiction in terms.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Adam Kirsch" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/adam-kirsch/theory-sometimes-seems-to-me-a-way-of-taking-revenge-on-literature/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b79/adam-kirsch-38562_academic-writing_theory-sometimes-seems-to-me-a-way-of-ta_3234520.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b79/adam-kirsch-38562_academic-writing_theory-sometimes-seems-to-me-a-way-of-ta_3234520.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b79/adam-kirsch-38562_academic-writing_theory-sometimes-seems-to-me-a-way-of-ta_3234520.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Theory sometimes seems to me a way of taking revenge on literature—the critic masters the text and rewrites…” — Adam Kirsch", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 6, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it. Life gets your blood going, & it smells good. Writing is mere writing, literature is mere. It appeals only to the subtlest senses—the imagination’s vision, & the imagination’s hearing—& the moral sense, & the intellect. This writing that you do, that so thrills you, that so rocks & exhilarates you, as if you were dancing next to the band, is barely audible to anyone else.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Annie Dillard" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/annie-dillard/the-written-word-is-weak-many-people-prefer-life-to-it-life-gets-your-2/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d20/annie-dillard-509_appeals_the-written-word-is-weak-many-people-pre_752833.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d20/annie-dillard-509_appeals_the-written-word-is-weak-many-people-pre_752833.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d20/annie-dillard-509_appeals_the-written-word-is-weak-many-people-pre_752833.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it. 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It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Ernest Hemingway" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ernest-hemingway/how-simple-the-writing-of-literature-would-be-if-it-were-only/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a7f/ernest-hemingway-83_books_how-simple-the-writing-of-literature-wou_3109607.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a7f/ernest-hemingway-83_books_how-simple-the-writing-of-literature-wou_3109607.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a7f/ernest-hemingway-83_books_how-simple-the-writing-of-literature-wou_3109607.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has…” — Ernest Hemingway", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 8, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“To my mind, nothing is as important as good writing, because in literature, the walls between people and cultures are broken down, and the things that plague us most–suspicion and fear of the other, and the tendency to see whole groups of people as objects, as monoliths of one cultural stereotype or another–are defeated.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Richard Bausch" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/richard-bausch/to-my-mind-nothing-is-as-important-as-good-writing-because-in-2/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/171/richard-bausch-30288_books_to-my-mind-nothing-is-as-important-as-go_1228562.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/171/richard-bausch-30288_books_to-my-mind-nothing-is-as-important-as-go_1228562.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/171/richard-bausch-30288_books_to-my-mind-nothing-is-as-important-as-go_1228562.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“To my mind, nothing is as important as good writing, because in literature, the walls between people and…” — Richard Bausch", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 9, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I grew up with the idealistic notion that writing and literature were noble causes. I had no inkling, no sense of what I would eventually encounter in terms of people who weren't being sincere. I'm not saying that it happens always or a lot, but it happens enough that sometimes it makes me feel a little queasy.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Oscar Hijuelos" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/oscar-hijuelos/i-grew-up-with-the-idealistic-notion-that-writing-and-literature-were/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b76/oscar-hijuelos-24619_being-sincere_i-grew-up-with-the-idealistic-notion-tha_1711393.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b76/oscar-hijuelos-24619_being-sincere_i-grew-up-with-the-idealistic-notion-tha_1711393.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b76/oscar-hijuelos-24619_being-sincere_i-grew-up-with-the-idealistic-notion-tha_1711393.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“I grew up with the idealistic notion that writing and literature were noble causes. I had no inkling, no…” — Oscar Hijuelos", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 10, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "To my mind, nothing is as important as good writing, because in literature, the walls between people and cultures are broken down, and the things that plague us most—suspicion and fear of the other, and the tendency to see whole groups of people as objects, as monoliths of one cultural stereotype or another—are defeated. This work is not done as a job, ladies and gentlemen, it is done out of love for the art and the artists who brought it forth, and who still bring it forth to us, down the years and across ignorance and chaos and borderlines.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Richard Bausch" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/richard-bausch/to-my-mind-nothing-is-as-important-as-good-writing-because-in/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/cd2/richard-bausch-30288_art_to-my-mind-nothing-is-as-important-as-go_247585.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/cd2/richard-bausch-30288_art_to-my-mind-nothing-is-as-important-as-go_247585.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/cd2/richard-bausch-30288_art_to-my-mind-nothing-is-as-important-as-go_247585.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“To my mind, nothing is as important as good writing, because in literature, the walls between people and…” — Richard Bausch", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 11, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“The only distinguishing characteristic of a literature professor at the millennium was that he or she wrote about other people's writing. Apart from that, the writing he wrote about didn't even need to be literature, or writing about literature, or even writing about writing about literature. He needed theory...In the unflickering glare, at the center of a severe perspective, Nelson suddenly felt the visceral truth of the world as text; he apperceived the fundamentally linguistic nature of reality. Everything was text, at every level of existence, all the way up from quarks to queer theory. Words arranged in lines; lines arrayed on pages; pages pressed together, bound, and trimmed in books; books arranged cover to cover along a shelf like the words in a line of text; shelves stacked one atop the other like lines of text on a page; rows of shelves pressed together, with just the barest passage for the reader, like the pages of a book.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "James Hynes" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/james-hynes/the-only-distinguishing-characteristic-of-a-literature-professor-at/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f90/james-hynes-70886_books_the-only-distinguishing-characteristic-o_1965439.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f90/james-hynes-70886_books_the-only-distinguishing-characteristic-o_1965439.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f90/james-hynes-70886_books_the-only-distinguishing-characteristic-o_1965439.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“The only distinguishing characteristic of a literature professor at the millennium was that he or she wrote…” — James Hynes", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } } ] }, { "@type": "CollectionPage", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/writing-literature/#webpage", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/writing-literature/", "name": "Writing Literature Quotes", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website" }, "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/writing-literature/#itemlist" }, "primaryImageOfPage": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3a9/naomi-shihab-nye-4185_believe_i-think-the-job-of-writing-and-literatur_2120798.png" }, "description": "Browse 11 Writing Literature quotes by 9 authors. 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