Best literature & ifs Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 2

“It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry.”

Ifs Use Faces Literature Blame Glasses Your Face

“If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.”

Ifs Doe Reading Literature Break Sea Ice Frozen Literary Works

Author:Franz Kafka

“If history could prove and teach us anything, it would be the private ownership of the means of production as a necessary requisite of civilization and material well-being. All civilizations have up to now been based on private property. Only nations committed to the principle of private property have risen above penury and produced science, art, and literature. There is no experience to show that any other social system could provide mankind with any of the achievements of civilization.”

“Well I'm a very similar age to Prince Charles. I'm a year older than him. I was at university at the same time as him. I think in the sixties, like all the Royals, he really had very little impact on my life at all and he seemed, if anything a lot older in his attitudes.”

Ifs Thinking Years Wells Littles Age Literature Attitude Impact University Sixty Royal Charles I

Author:Anthony Holden

“What was funny if you were there is that we were all immensely sophisticated people who knew exactly what she was going to say and we're chatting away, nice to see you.”

People Ifs Literature Nice Sophisticated Chatting Nice To See You

Author:Anthony Holden

“If it's a woman it's caustic, if it's a man it's authority, If it's a woman it's too pushy, if it's a man it's aggressive in the best sense of the word.”

Ifs Men Literature Authority Aggressive Pushy Caustic

Author:Barbara Walters

“If information is true, if it can be verified, and if it's really important, the newspaper needs to be willing to take the risk associated with using unidentified sources.”

Ifs Needs Important Literature Risk Information Willing Source Newspapers

Author:Bob Woodward

“My sense about Greta is that people ought to wait and see and see if she doesn't indeed turn out to be as balanced as we hope and expect she will. But there you are.”

People Ifs Turns Literature Waiting Ought Balanced

Author:Brit Hume

“I mean, if somebody said to me, junior year of college, you can go anywhere, your old man's paying for it, I'd have been gone in a flash. But I had to work. Every summer my mother would say, 'Get that job and hold on to it until August 30.'”

Ifs Men Years Mean Has Beens Said Jobs Mother Literature Gone College Summer Old Man Flash Juniors August Junior Year

Author:Chris Matthews

“People are much more inclined to believe and say bad things about you if you're famous.”

People Ifs Believe Literature Bad Things

Author:Danielle Steel

“Even though I may not intend it when I set out to write the book, these places just emerge as major players in what I'm doing, almost as if they are insisting on it.”

Ifs Writing May Book Literature Player Majors Insisting

Author:David Guterson

“In my books, I never portray violence as a reasonable solution to a problem. If the lead characters in the story are driven to it, it's at the extreme end of their experience.”

Ifs Book Ends Character Stories Problem Literature Violence Solutions Extremes Driven Reasonable Solution To A Problem Lead Characters

Author:Dean Koontz

“The interesting thing is always to see if you can find a fact that will change your mind about something, to test and see if you can.”

Ifs Mind Facts Literature Interesting Tests Interesting Things Changing Your Mind

Author:Diane Sawyer

“The president is being denounced for not taking the kind of pre-emptive action in Afghanistan that he has been so passionately denounced for taking in Iraq. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.”

Ifs Kind Doe Has Beens Action Literature President Iraq Afghanistan

Author:Ferdinand Mount

“The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves.”

Ifs Care Literature Great Writers

Author:Irwin Shaw

“As I go to sleep I remember what my father said-that one can never be sure if one will awake. The way my health is now, this is becoming more and more real.”

Ifs Way Said Real Remember Father Literature Sleep Becoming Awake Going To Sleep Becoming More

Author:Jerzy Kosinski

“In the streets through which we passed, I must own the houses in general struck me as if they were dark and gloomy, and yet at the same time they also struck me as prodigiously great and majestic.”

Ifs Literature House Dark Streets Gloomy Majestic

Book:Travels in England in 1782

Source: Travels in England in 1782

“Now, if they're there to talk about something specifically, and I determine through my own editorial judgment, that another area isn't germane, or isn't an important part of it, that's something else. But we never agree to anything in advance, absolutely not.”

Ifs Important Literature My Own Judgment Areas Agree Determine Editorials

Author:Katie Couric

“They see us interacting with people, they see us doing serious interviews, they see us having fun, and when you're conversing with someone, you get a much clearer impression of who that person is than if they are just reading into a news piece.”

People Ifs Persons Reading Literature Fun Pieces Serious News Impression Having Fun Interviews Interacting

Author:Katie Couric

“You know, you've got serious pieces, you've got light pieces, you've got cooking segments, you've got health-related topics, so it's not as if they've had a unique personality from the get-go.”

Ifs Knows Light Literature Pieces Serious Personality Unique Cooking Related Topics Unique Personality Health Related

Author:Katie Couric

“The book was at a reasonably high position on the New York Times... before I was in the country. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if my presence here would push it up or down.”

Ifs Book Country Would Be Literature Interesting New York Position Experiments New York Times

Author:Kazuo Ishiguro

“Over the years, I've trained myself to speak using the same language I would use if I were typing: meaning using full sentences in the way that paragraphs and scenes are arranged.”

Ifs Way Years Use Literature Speak Language Scene Sentences Paragraph Typing

Author:Kevin J. Anderson

“If I didn't see its place in the Saga when I planned it, I probably wouldn't write it at all.”

Ifs Writing Literature Saga

Author:Leslie Charteris

“The United Nations has become a largely irrelevant, if not positively destructive institution, and the just-released U.N. report on the atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, proves the point.”

Ifs Literature Nations United Prove Institutions Reports Destructive Irrelevant United Nations Positively Atrocities Sudan Darfur

Author:Linda Chavez

“If you support the war on drugs in its present form, then you're only paying lip-service to the defense of freedom, and you don't really grasp the concept of the sovereign individual human being.”

Ifs Humans War Form Literature Individual Human Beings Support Drug Concepts Lips Defense Sovereign War On Drugs Lip Service

Author:Neal Boortz

“Photographs are still being taken but aren't being shown. There's one of a skeleton bound at the wrists with pants still around its ankles; if it was a woman, she was likely raped; if it was a man, he was possibly castrated.”

Ifs Men Stills Literature Taken Bounds Photograph Pants Wrists Skeletons Ankles

Author:Nicholas D. Kristof

“The news media's silence, particularly television news, is reprehensible. If we knew as much about Darfur as we do about Michael Jackson, we might be able to stop these things from continuing.”

Ifs Might Able Literature Silence Media Television News Continuing News Media Darfur Television News

Author:Nicholas D. Kristof

“The photos were taken by African Union soldiers. People in Congress saw them. I thought if people could see them, there would be public outcry. No one would be able to say, We just didn't know what was going on there.”

People Ifs Knows Would Be Able Literature Taken Saws Unions Soldier Congress African Union

Author:Nicholas D. Kristof

“If you write in category, you write knowing there's a framework, there are reader expectations.”

Ifs Writing Literature Knowing Reader Expectations Categories Framework

Author:Nora Roberts

“I read "Up From Slavery" and then my dream - if I may so call it - of being a race leader dawned.”

Ifs May Dream Literature Race Leader Slavery

Author:Marcus Garvey

“You can believe in originals only if you just don't know their context within literature. Certainly I believe in originality, but it lies with the teller, not the tale.”

Ifs Knows Believe Lying Literature I Believe Originals I Believe In Tales Originality

Author:William Monahan

“if a book is not good enough for a grownup, it is not good enough for a child.”

Ifs Children Book Enough Literature Good Enough Not Good Enough Grownups Children's Literature

Author:Madeleine L'Engle

“If I have something I want to say that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I will write it in a book for children.”

Ifs Want Writing Children Book Literature Difficult Adults Children's Literature Children Book

Author:Madeleine L'Engle

“I look upon literature as an art, and I believe that if you misuse it or abuse it, it will leave you. It is not a thing that you can nail down and use as you want. You have to let it use you, too.”

Ifs Want Believe Looks Art Use Literature I Believe Abuse Down And Look Up Nails Misuse

Book:Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations

Source: Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations

“Fiction, on the whole, and if it is any good, tends to be a subversive element in society.”

Ifs Whole Literature Fiction Elements Subversive

Author:Fay Weldon

“But if there is such a thing as social commitment in literature, I think it must manifest itself in a reader's awareness of the human condition, in the writer's touching some common nerve ending. I think this kind of social commitment, like a lady's slip, should be there but it must not show.”

Ifs Thinking Should Humans Kind Shows Literature Social Common Conditions Awareness Reader Commitment Nerves Manifest Touching Slips Human Condition

Author:Bel Kaufman

“Christendom never came from an unbroken grave. It would have been buried in that grave, as Judas thought it was going to be, and as the Jews thought it was going to be, except there had been a resurrection from the dead. Then you can explain Christendom, churches, and literatures, if Christ rose again; but otherwise they cannot be explained at all. Our whole civilization rests on the broken Cross of the Master, and it is incredible that a civilization like this, in a world advancing steadily for eighteen centuries, has been founded on a lie.”

“There is nothing more important than writing well for the young, if literature is to have a continuance ... They will inherit the earth; and nothing that we value will endure in the world unless they can be persuaded to value it too.”

Ifs World Writing Wells Important Earth Young Values Literature Endure Children's Literature Continuance Writing Well

Author:Jill Paton Walsh

“Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction, and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. If a writer doesn't give away secrets, his own or those of the people he loves, if he doesn't court disapproval, reproach and general wrath, whether of friends, family or party apparatchiks... the result is pallid, inanimate, a lump of earth.”

People Ifs Giving Earth Pain Literature Results Party Secret Magic Destruction Court Liberation Marvelous Wrath Reproach Lumps Family Friends Disapproval

Author:Michael Chabon

“I love the gothic literature. It always has such great stories with characters bigger than life and the stakes are always high. And because there's always a wolf at the door, the emotions are high; the romance, the sexuality, friendships, and relationships. You don't know if the guy kissing you one minute is going to bite you the next. This heightens all of the sensibilities and emotions, and therefore, it sings to me. And that's where the music comes from.”

“I used to do miserably in English literature, which I thought was a sign of moral turpitude. As I look back on it, I think it was rather to my credit. The notion of actually putting writers' words into other words is quite ridiculous because why bother if writers mean what they mean, and if they don't, why read them? There is, I suppose, a case for studying literary works in depth, but I don't quite know what 'in depth' means unless you read a paragraph over and over again.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Looks Mean Used Literature Education Moral Cases Study Depth Notion Credit Ridiculous Bother Paragraph English Literature Why Bother Literary Works

Author:Patricia Wentworth

“I am not a Ph.D. in economics or a doctorate in literature that I can afford to take my singing lightly. Even if I sing a jingle, I take it as seriously as oxygen.”

Ifs I Can Literature Singing Economics Oxygen Jingles Doctorates

Author:Kailash Kher

“And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life... again I should point to India.”

Ifs Should Humans May Has Beens Facts Wanted Order Asks Literature Perfect Race Draws Universal India Greek Comprehensive Inner Life Republic Day Most Wanted

Book:India: What Can it Teach Us?

Source: India: What Can it Teach Us?

“I did not go to any creative writing workshop; I did not major in literature. If I can write, anyone can write. All it needs is imagination.”

Ifs Needs Writing I Can Literature Imagination Creative Majors Creative Writing Workshops Writing Workshop

Author:Vikas Swarup

“With English literature, if you do a bit of shonky spelling, no one dies, but if you're half-way through a maths calculation and you stick in an extra zero, everything just crashes into the ravine.”

Ifs Way Dies Literature Bits Half Sticks Math Extras Zero Crash Calculations Spelling English Literature Half Way

Author:Mark Haddon

“No matter what is happening in life or in the world - war, natural disaster, poor health, pain, the death of loved ones - if existence is filled with art, music and literature, life will be fulfilling, a joy.”

“If one cannot get along without a mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one reconstruct oneself or one's life, without seeing oneself in the "mirror" of literature?”

Ifs Literature Seeing Mirrors Oneself Shaving

Book:Literature and Revolution

Source: Literature and Revolution

“At the end of the day, despite all the other great things that literature does in society and in a person's life, I think that we read to escape. And I think that place, more than anything, provides that escape quickly, if an author is engaged with the place.”

Ifs Thinking Persons Doe Ends Literature Great Things Despite Engaged The End Of The Day

Author:Tea Obreht

“I always treated writing as a profession, never as a hobby. If you don't believe in yourself, no one else will.”

Ifs Writing Believe Literature Don't Believe Profession Treated Believe In Yourself Hobbies

Author:Laurell K. Hamilton

“One of my rules is never explain. A writer is a lot like a magician, if you explain how the trick works then a lot of the magic turns mundane.”

Ifs Writing Turns Literature Magic Tricks Magician Mundane

Author:Laurell K. Hamilton

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