Ambitious Quote by Cathleen Schine

“Key to the success of ugly leisure is that it keeps those who participate in it in the dark about how little it is…

— Paul Munson & Joshua Farris Drake

With certain rapturous exceptions, literature is the moral life.

— Cynthia Ozick

There are a significant number of learned men and women who hold that any successful effort to make ideas lively, intelligible and interesting is…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

“Absence is presence: not knowing how to do something means you’re freer to learn how to do it, rather than simply going with what…

— Drake Baer

Where no interest is takes in science, literature and liberal pursuits, mere facts and insignificant criticisms necessarily become the themes of discourse; and minds,…

— Madame de Stael

“Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material amelioration... If three is anything more poignant than a body agonizing for want of…

— Victor Hugo

“Moral experience—the actual possession and exercise of good character—is necessary truly to understand moral principles and profitably to apply them.”

— Aristotle

Letting ourselves down in some fashion is such an integral part of daily life that the paucity of literature on the subject is baffling.

— Lionel Shriver

“Our job, then, is two-fold: to focus on our own failings as writers. But also to speak more forcefully as advocates for literature. Books…

— Steve Almond

This, indeed, is one of the eternal paradoxes of both life and literature-that without passion little gets done; yet, without control of that passion,…

— F. L. Lucas

“...learning is not the consequence of teaching or writing, but rather of thinking...so a playful, provocative, unclear but stimulating book could actually be more…

— Brian McLaren

The idea of some kind of objectively constant, universal literary value is seductive. It feels real. It feels like a stone cold fact that…

— Lev Grossman