Books Quote by Nelson Algren

“What good literature can do and does do—far greater than any importation of morality—is touch the human soul.”

— Karen Swallow Prior

Literature is humanity talking to itself.

— Norman Rush

“Every profound literary work is a bridge between what we are and what we may become, not just as individuals, but as a collective…

— Alok Mishra

“True law, the code of justice, the essence of our sensations of right and wrong, is the conscience of society. It has taken thousands…

— Walter Van Tilburg Clark

“the law cannot respect the conscience of flesh-and-blood human beings unless it also recognizes conscience claims brought by the corporations they form.”

— John Corvino

Literature is for the sake of humanity.

— Cynthia Ozick

A play that forces us to question our moral responsibility to the victims of human rights abuse.

— Lynn Nottage

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

“Literature is, to my mind, the great teaching power of the world, the ultimate creator of all values, and it is this, not only…

— William Butler Yeats

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

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Literature is communication. Communication requires loyalty. A rigorous morality results from complicity in the knowledge of Evil, which is the basis of intense communication.”

— Georges Bataille