Books Quote by Jean-Paul Sartre

The writer studies literature, not the world.

— Annie Dillard

Like morality, literature needs to be universal. So that the writer must put himself on the side of the majority, of the two billion…

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Literature exists because the world isn't enough.

— Fernando Pessoa

Literature is what you write when you think you should be saying something. Writing begins when you'd rather be doing anything else: and you've…

— Kenneth Patchen

Literature is the question minus the answer.

— Roland Barthes

Readers are hungry to have their stories in the world, to see mirrors of themselves if the stories are about people like them, and…

— Jacqueline Woodson

Literature usually begets literature.

— Susan Sontag

“The pale organisms of literary heroes feeding under the author's supervision swell gradually with the reader's lifeblood; so that the genius of a writer…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“Literature is literature. Its purpose is to challenge and disorient us, to break us down a little bit so that we are forced to…

— Mark Slouka

“Writers more interested in literature than the truth ensure that they never come out with either thing — one reason that the word literature today sounds…

— The editors n+1

“At times I wondered whether writing was not a solipsistic luxury in countries like mine, where there were scant readers, so many people who…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

This is how I understand literature - as a kind of remix or echo chamber. What's going on in a literary work are other…

— Tommy McCarthy