Books Quote by Joris-Karl Huysmans

Literature always anticipates life. It doesn't copy it but moulds it to it's purpose.

— Oscar Wilde

Literature is for the sake of humanity.

— Cynthia Ozick

“Current "literature" [is] well-written books in which disgusting people do disgusting things to other disgusting people for no apparent reason and with no apparent…

— Roberta Gellis

Literature is an ethical leap. It is a moral decision. A perilous exercise in constant failure. Literature should have grievances, because there are so…

— Miguel Syjuco

“It is not a single cowardice that drives us into fiction's fantasies. We often fear that literature is a game we can't afford to…

— William H. Gass

Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: You can't deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy…

— Cesare Pavese

Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget…

— Barbara Kingsolver

Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.

— Anonymous

Literature matters so much to me I can hardly stand it.

— David Shields

Literature ceases to be literature when it commits itself to moral uplift; it becomes moral philosophy or some such dull thing.

— Anthony Burgess

We do literature a real disservice if we reduce it to knowledge or to use, to a problem to be solved. If literature solves…

— Marjorie Garber

With certain rapturous exceptions, literature is the moral life.

— Cynthia Ozick