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Literature Quotes

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Literature Quotes

“When Mats came in the evenings, they would drink tea in the kitchen while reading their books and talking about them. If Katri came in, they were quiet and waited for her to leave. The back door would close, and Katri would have gone. “Does your sister read our books?” Anna wanted to know. “No. She reads literature.”

Ifs Knows Doe Book Wanted Reading Literature Talking Gone Doors Drink Quiet Evening Tea Kitchen Anna Back Doors

Book:The True Deceiver

Source: The True Deceiver

“A work of (whatever) art can be either 'received' or 'used'. ...'Using' is inferior to 'reception' because art, if used rather than received, merely facilitates, brightens, relieves or palliates our life, and does not add to it ... When the art in question is literature a complication arises, for to 'receive' significant words is always, in one sense, to 'use' them, to go through and beyond them to an imagined something which is not itself verbal.”

Ifs Doe Art Use Used Poetry Literature Our Lives Add Significant Arise Inferiors Complication Facilitate Reception

Author:C. S. Lewis

“When a philosopher, scientist, or psychologist discusses the discrepancy between the actual and the ideal, he or she attempts to convince us with the tools of discursive thought ... An artist does it differently ... their primary approach is different, even though both groups, if you will, are investigating the actual, the ideal, and the discrepancy in between.”

“Stopgaps do belong to the internal economy of the form, since the Whole requires them, even if only in a subordinate position ... The stopgap Luigi Paryson's 'zeppa' accepts its own banality, because without the speed that the banal allows up, it would slow up a passage that is crucial for the outcome of the work and its interpretation.”

Ifs Whole Form Poetry Literature Accepting Economy Position Speed Outcomes Internals Interpretation Crucial Passages Subordinates Banality

Author:Umberto Eco

“If history is a record of survivors, Poetry shelters other voices.”

Ifs Poetry Literature Voice Records Survivor Shelter

Book:The Birth-mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History

Source: The Birth-mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History

“In this world that we live in we have originality in literature, but we also have TV and movies. I write love stories. I could never write a love story based on the Titanic - that was never a novel. If I see an idea that's been done in film, I try to avoid that.”

Ifs World Writing Trying Ideas Done Stories Film Literature Novel This World Tvs Love Story Originality

Author:Nicholas Sparks

“Barrie and the wonderful characters he created, Lewis Carroll, even French literature, like Baudelaire or over in the States, Poe, you open those books, you open The Flowers of Evil and begin to read. If it were written today, you'd be absolutely stupefied by the work. It's this incredible period where the work is timeless, ageless. So yeah, I just love all those guys. It's my deep passion in those great 19th century writers.”

“I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us tomorrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomised our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me.”

Source: Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit

“I don't care very much for literary shrines and hauntsI knew a woman in London who boasted that she had lodgings from the windows of which she could throw a stone into Carlyle's yard. And when I said, "Why throw a stone into Carlyle's yard?" she looked at me as if I were an imbecile and changed the subject.”

Ifs Said Care Literature Subjects Changed Travel Stones Window Don't Care London I Don't Care Yards Shrines Imbeciles

Author:Carolyn Wells

“If the British prose style is Churchillian, America is the tobacco auctioneer, the barker; Runyon, Lardner, W.W., the traveling salesman who can sell the world the Brooklyn Bridge every day, can put anything over on you and convince you that tomatoes grow at the South Pole.”

Ifs World America Literature Grows Style Sells South British Bridges Prose Convince Tobacco Brooklyn Salesman Tomatoes American Literature Brooklyn Bridge

Book:Mumbo Jumbo: A Novel

Source: Mumbo Jumbo: A Novel

“I could not live by literature if only to begin with, because of the slow maturing of my work and its special character.”

Ifs Character Literature Special Live By Mature

Book:Tell Me a Riddle

Source: Tell Me a Riddle

“My work is a matter of fundamental sounds (no joke intended) made as fully as possible, and I accept responsibility for nothing else. If people want to have headaches among the overtones, let them. And provide their own aspirin.”

People Ifs Want Made Matter Literature Sound Responsibility Accepting Jokes Criticism Fundamentals Headache Aspirin

Book:No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett & Alan Schneider

Source: No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett & Alan Schneider

“Cliche refers to words, commonplace to ideas. Cliche describes the form or the letter, commonplace the substance or spirit. To confuse them is to confuse the thought with the expression of the thought. The cliche is immediately perceivable; the commonplace very often escapes notice if decked out in original dress. There are few examples, in any literature, of new ideas expressed in original form. The most critical mind must often be content with one or the other of these pleasures, only too happy when it is not deprived of both at once, which is not too rarely the case.”

Ifs Mind Ideas Form Spirit Literature Pleasure Cases Example Expression Letters Originals Dresses Critical Substance New Ideas Deprived Cliche Commonplace Often Is

Author:Remy de Gourmont

“How is it possible on the one hand, for example, to behave as if nothing on earth were more important than literature, and on the other fail to see that wherever one looks, people are struggling against hunger and will necessarily consider that the most important thing is what they earn at the end of the month? Because this is where he (the writer) is confronted with a new paradox: while all he wanted was to write for those who are hungry, he now discovers that it is only those who have plenty to eat who have the leisure to take notice of his existence.”

People Ifs Writing Looks Important Ends Hands Wanted Earth Literature Existence Struggle Failing Example Months Important Things Hunger Hungry Plenty Behave Paradox Leisure

Author:Stig Dagerman

“Art is a form of exploration, of sailing off into the unknown alone, heading for those unmarked places on the map. If children are not permitted-not taught-to be adventurers and explorers as children, what will become of the world of adventure, of stories, of literature itself?”

Ifs World Children Art Stories Form Literature Taught Adventure Art Is Maps Exploration Sailing Headings Explorers Adventurer

Author:Michael Chabon

“What is well done, I feel as if I did; what is ill-done, I reck not of.”

Ifs Feels Wells Done Literature Ill Well Done

Book:The Annotated Emerson

Source: The Annotated Emerson

“The utmost the American novelist can hope for, if he hopes at all to see his work included in the literature of his time, is that it may eventually be found to be along in the direction of the growing tip of collective consciousness. Preeminently the novelist's gift is that of access to the collective mind.”

Ifs Mind May Found Literature Consciousness Growing Access Novelists Collectives Collective Consciousness

Book:Beyond Borders: The Selected Essays of Mary Austin

Source: Beyond Borders: The Selected Essays of Mary Austin

“Children's books are looked on as a sideline of literature. A special smile. They are usually thought to be associated with women. I was determined not to have this label of sentimentality put on me so I signed by my intials, hoping people wouldn't bother to wonder if the books were written by a man, woman or kangaroo.”

People Ifs Men Children Book Literature Names Wonder Written Special Determined Labels Bother Men Women Sentimentality Children's Books Sidelines Children's Literature Kangaroos

Author:P. L. Travers

“As if paralyzed by the national fear of ideas, the democratic distrust of whatever strikes beneath the prevailing platitudes, it evades all resolute and honest dealing with what, after all, must be every healthy literature's elementary materials.”

Ifs Ideas Literature Honest Materials Healthy Democratic Strikes Distrust Prevailing Paralyzed Resolute American Literature Platitudes

Book:H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series

Source: H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series

“If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe--without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced.”

Ifs Literature Critics Orderly American Literature Allan Poe

Author:H. L. Mencken

“The novel is a perfect medium for revealing to us the changing rainbow of our living relationships. The novel can help us to live,as nothing else can: no didactic Scripture, anyhow. If the novelist keeps his thumb out of the pan.”

Ifs Helping Literature Perfect Novel Morality Scripture Mediums Novelists Rainbow Revealing Thumbs Didactic

Book:Selected Poems of D.h. Lawrence

Source: Selected Poems of D.h. Lawrence

“If a novel reveals true and vivid relationships, it is a moral work, no matter what the relationships consist in. If the novelisthonours the relationship in itself, it will be a great novel.”

Ifs Matter Literature Moral Novel Morality No Matter What Vivid Great Novels

Book:Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays

Source: Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays

“Any novel of importance has a purpose. If only the "purpose" be large enough, and not at outs with the passional inspiration.”

Ifs Enough Inspiration Purpose Passion Literature Novel Morality Importance

Book:Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays

Source: Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays

“If we wish to unfold the mind in our children we do not leave them to their own uncultivated taste in all these things, but we try to help them to train that taste, whether it be in art, in music or in literature.”

Ifs Trying Mind Children Art Helping Literature Wish Taste Our Children Train

Book:Vegetarianism and Occultism

Source: Vegetarianism and Occultism

“If we turn to early Irish literature, as we naturally may, to see what sort of people the Irish were in the infancy of the race, we find ourselves wandering in delighted bewilderment through a darkness shot with lightning and purple flame.”

People Ifs May Turns Literature Race Darkness Shots Wander Flames Lightning Purple Delighted Infancy Bewilderment

Author:Sean O Faolain

“Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.”

Ifs Love Dies Literature Tree Expression Roots Affection Caress

Book:Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of

Source: Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of

“It’s one thing if everyone wears the same shoes or drinks the same soda. But the world of literature is the last place in which globalization should mean homogeneity.”

Ifs World Should Mean Lasts Literature One Thing Drink Shoes Globalization Soda Last Place Homogeneity

Author:Benjamin Moser

“If you covet fame, if you covet all the superficial accolades, you're gonna be miserable 'cause you're never going to get enough praise. If you covet contributing something substantive to movies, music, literature, then you won't be unhappy.”

Ifs Enough Literature Causes Fame Praise Unhappy Miserable Superficial Contributing Accolades

Author:Ethan Hawke

“I don't think film schools are mentoring kids. I think they just send them through the curriculum, so now you know how to hold a camera, how to use a Dx3 menu. You can learn that in five minutes from somebody that doesn't even know anything. But what do you know if you haven't read anything - studied art and studied literature - what do you have to contribute?”

Ifs Thinking Knows Art Use Kids School Film Literature Know How Five Minutes Havens Cameras Do You Know Five Minutes Curriculum Mentoring Menus Film School

Author:Rob Nilsson

“The subject of Finnish poetry ought to have a special interest for the Japanese student, if only for the reason that Finnish poetry comes more closely in many respects to Japanese poetry than any other form of Western poetry.”

Ifs Reason Form Literature Interest Special Subjects Students Ought Western Special Interests Finnish

Book:Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn

Source: Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn

“We with my husband [Joseph Millar] are often the first reader for one another's work, and we often also have the last word. We trust each other. We have our past working life in common, our recombined families, as well as our life as teachers, and we read much of the same literature and have similar esthetics, so there's a simpatico there. But we do disagree and that can be fruitful, even if it's not so great in the moment.”

Ifs Firsts Wells Moments Lasts Past Literature Common Teacher Our Lives Reader Husband My Husband Disagree Our Past Last Words Working Life Simpatico

Author:Dorianne Laux

“The literature now is so opaque to the average person that you couldn't take a science-fiction short story that's published now and turn it into a movie. There'd be way too much ground work you'd have to lay. It's OK to have detail and density, but if you rely on being a lifelong science-fiction fan to understand what the story is about, then it's not going to translate to a broader audience.”

Ifs Way Persons Stories Turns Literature Fiction Audience Too Much Fans Science Fiction Lays Average Details Rely Short Story Translate Lifelong Average Person Density Opaque

Author:James Cameron

“Anyone who wants to be a writer should, if given the opportunity, hang out with "real writers," that is, poets or writers who are lions in literature, semi-lions, or published authors.”

Ifs Want Should Real Literature Opportunity Given Poet Hanging Out Lions

Author:Kirby Wright

“If a sufficient number of management layers are superimposed on top of each other, it can be assured that disaster is not left to chance.”

Ifs Literature Left Chance Numbers Management Disaster Sufficient Layers Assured

Author:Norman Ralph Augustine

“Wine has been to me a firm friend and a wise counsellor. Wine has lit up for me the pages of literature, and revealed in life romance lurking in the commonplace. Wine has made me bold, but not foolish; has induced me to say silly things, but not do them. If such small indiscretions standing in the debit column of wine's account were added up, they would amount to nothing in comparison with the vast accumulation on the credit side.”

“I had huge ambition for literature. I don't see the point of doing anything if you don't have ambition for it.”

Ifs Literature Huge Ambition

Author:Jeanette Winterson

“I and everyone else in this world live in what is probably the most difficult times that have ever been. We are facing total thermonuclear destruction; and, if you can make someone believe in a ghost or a demon or a vampire in the face of that, you are doing well. From my own personal point of view, I don't think just blood and guts is enough. At least, it isn't for me. Maybe it will turn someone's stomach; but, I'm not sure that is literature or even entertainment.”

“Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.”

Ifs Writing Ends Enough Stories Death Literature Afternoon Storyteller True Story Farewell To Arms

Book:The Hemingway Collection

Source: The Hemingway Collection

“When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.”

Ifs Littles Ideas Turns Literature Lows Alcohol Flames Stoves Funny Sarcastic

Author:Ernest Hemingway

“If you look at the literature of the 19th century, you get things like Kafka and Dostoevsky, who basically write about feeling bored and alienated. That's because we lost contact with the important things in life like work that you enjoy, or the garden, nature, your family and friends.”

Ifs Writing Looks Important Feelings Literature Lost Enjoy Century Garden Important Things Contact Bored Our Family Things In Life Family And Friends 19th Century

Author:Tom Hodgkinson

“There's so much to be found in literature, especially if you don't have the money to travel or the means to get out of your neighborhood or get off work.”

Ifs Mean Found Literature Neighborhood

Author:Saul Williams

“Literature is always something - it is either story or poetry, ideally both. That is, you always know what it is and even if the interpretation is not available, the experience of language is.”

Ifs Knows Stories Literature Language Available Interpretation

Author:Aleksandar Hemon

“"The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool." Our quote of the day is, from of all people, the Marquis de Sade, the most infamous writer in all of French literature. And by the way, if you recognized that quote, you're sick.”

People Ifs Thinking Men Way Literature He Man Fool Sick Suits Way Of Thinking Infamous French Literature

Author:Tucker Carlson

“I have respect for literature. If he found the words, if she found the words - this is a book!”

Ifs Book Found Literature This Is A Book

Author:Agnes Varda

“Love can't be a metaphor anymore. If you try to make literature out of it, it doesn't work.”

Ifs Trying Literature Metaphor

Author:Vivian Gornick

“There are a lot of problems involved in comparative history. You never know if you're getting the comparisons weighted rightly, you're bound to dominate one literature better than another. But I do see it as one of the ways forward for the future. I think it is a very important approach.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Way Important Problem Literature Involved Approach Bounds Comparison Way Forward

Author:John Elliott

“Name me the final number, the highest, the greatest. But that's absurd! If the number of numbers is infinite, how can there be a final number? Then how can you speak of a final revolution? There is no final one. Revolutions are infinite.”

Ifs Inspirational Art Literature Names Speak Numbers Revolution Highest Infinite Finals Absurd

Author:Yevgeny Zamyatin

“To the feudal aristocracy and the aristocracy of the spirit, nobility derives from diametrically opposite sources. The glory of the feudal aristocrat is in being a link in the longest possible chain of ancestors. The glory of the aristocrat of the spirit is in having no ancestors - or having as few as possible. If an artist is his own ancestor, if he has only descendents, he enters history as a genius; if he has few ancestors, or is related to them distantly, he enters history as a talent.”

Ifs Inspirational Art Spirit Artist Literature Talent Source Genius Glory Opposites Chains Related Links Ancestor Nobility Aristocracy

Author:Yevgeny Zamyatin

“He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would ever reach heaven; for everyone has need to be forgiven.”

Ifs Needs Literature Heaven Break Forgiveness Forgiving Bridges Forgiven Never Forgive What Is Forgiveness Inspirational Forgiveness Forgiving Others Not Forgiving

Author:George Herbert

“The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul.”

Ifs World Want Humans Soul Spirituality Literature Music Clear Painting Garden Architecture Absence Paradise Thrive Gardening Great Garden

Author:Thomas Moore