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Literature Quotes

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Literature Quotes

“We've got to recognize that when we march into Iraq, we're setting up the card tables in front of every university in the Arab world, the Islamic world, to recruit for al-Qaida.”

World Literature Fronts Tables University Iraq Setting Cards Settings Islamic March Als Recruit Arab World

Author:Chris Matthews

“Part of this new world of completely improvisational terrorism is that there were codes of war that disintegrated in the face of terrorism.”

World War Faces Literature Terrorism Code New World

Author:Diane Sawyer

“The Swords were still interesting but by then a cast of characters had started to appear and go on from book to book, and other things about the world began to feel constricting. And there were other things I wanted to do, so I closed the series up and stopped it.”

World Feels Stills Book Character Wanted Literature Interesting Goes On Series Casts

Author:Fred Saberhagen

“The spirit world doesn't admit to communicating with me, so it's fairly even.”

World Spirit Literature Communicate Spirit World

Author:Howard Nemerov

“It's terrible. How can we tell the world who the real Michael Jackson is?”

World Real Literature Terrible

Author:Martin Bashir

“I was inspired to write this book by those who are sceptical of the power of freedom to change the world.”

World Writing Book Literature Inspired Changing The World

Author:Natan Sharansky

“Science is a limited way of knowing, looking at just the natural world and natural causes. There are a lot of ways human beings understand the universe - through literature, theology, aesthetics, art or music.”

World Way Humans Art Universe Literature Causes Natural Human Beings Knowing Atheism Positive Atheism Theology Natural World Aesthetics

Author:Eugenie Scott

“In Tar Baby, the classic concept of the individual with a solid, coherent identity is eschewed for a model of identity which sees the individual as a kaleidoscope of heterogeneous impulses and desires, constructed from multiple forms of interaction with the world as a play of difference that cannot be completely comprehended.”

World Play Form Desire Literature Individual Differences Identity Baby Models Concepts Impulse Classic Interaction Multiple Kaleidoscope

Author:Toni Morrison

“We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love.”

“Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see, be, or believe. It's more like conversation, raising new questions and inspiring you to answer them for yourself.”

World Want Writing Believe Kind Doe Moving Literature Answers Conversation

Author:Barbara Kingsolver

“Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.”

World Literature Lost Harm Wander Dumb Innocence Bells Wiser Leper Prudishness

Author:Graham Greene

“Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.”

World Would Be Literature Lost Protection Harm Wander Dumb Innocence Bells Wiser Leper Prudishness

Author:Graham Greene

“Literature, fiction, poetry, whatever, makes justice in the world. That's why it almost always has to be on the side of the underdog.”

World Literature Sides Justice Fiction Underdog

Author:Grace Paley

“It has seemed to me that literature, as I meant it, was embattled, that it was increasingly difficult to find writing doing what I thought literature should do - which was simply to push people into changing their ideas about the world, and to go further, to encourage us in the work of changing the world, to making it more just and more truly human.”

People World Should Writing Humans Ideas Literature Difficult Changing The World

Author:Dorothy Allison

“The translator ... Peculiar outcast, ghost in the world of literature, recreating in another form something already created, creating and not creating, writing words that are his own and not his own, writing a work not original to him, composing with utmost pains and without recognition of his pains or the fact that the composition really is his own.”

World Writing Facts Pain Form Literature Creating Originals Ghost Recognition Peculiar Composition Composing Outcast Translators Writing Words

Author:Lydia Davis

“Writers and scholars have emerged in recent times (some familiar, some new) to continue to challenge the notion of a literature that encompasses the world - and reaffirms our existence in it. It is a multicultural vision that embraces and includes our shrinking universe; it is a multicultural vision that the white man fears and a vision that the rest of us can celebrate.”

Men World Universe Literature Challenges White Existence Vision Embrace Notion Familiar Celebrate Scholar White Man Multicultural Shrinking

Author:Jessica Hagedorn

“in a sense much great literature is subversive, since its very existence implies that what matters is art, imagination, and truth. In what we call the real world, on the other hand, what usually counts is money, power, and public success.”

World Art Real Matter Hands Literature Imagination Existence Real World What Matters Subversive Money Power Great Literature

Author:Alison Lurie

“The highest thing one can do in literature is to succeed in saying that thing which one meant to say. There is nothing better than that - to make the world see your thoughts as you see them.”

World Literature Can Do Succeed Highest

Book:I Await the Devil's Coming: Annotated & Unexpurgated

Source: I Await the Devil's Coming: Annotated & Unexpurgated

“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.”

“Poetry deserves the honor it obtains as the eldest offspring of literature, and the fairest. It is the fruitfulness of many plants growing into one flower and sowing itself over the world in shapes of beauty and color, which differ with the soil that receives and the sun that ripens the seed. In Persia, it comes up the rose of Hafiz; in England, the many-blossomed tree of Shakespeare.”

World Poetry Literature Sun Growing Tree Color Flower Honor Shapes Deserve England Rose Plant Come Up Seeds Soil Offspring Sowing Eldest Persia Fruitfulness Hafiz Plants Growing

Author:Robert Aris Willmott

“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

“In America there is really very little knowledge of the literature of the rest of the world. Of the literature of Latin America, yes, But that's not all that different in inspiration from that of America, or of Europe. One must go further. You don't even have to go too far in terms of geography - you can start with the Native Americans and listen to their poetry.”

World Littles Different Inspiration America Literature Term Europe Native Latin Native American Geography Latin America Little Knowledge

Book:There Was a Country: A Memoir

Source: There Was a Country: A Memoir

“Doesn't the theory of relativity concern literature too? In our world there is no longer any room for the privileged observer, as there is none for the observer of the universe - we are all within.”

World Universe Literature Rooms Theory Concern Our World Privileged Observers Relativity Theories Of Relativity

Author:Nina Berberova

“It is impossible to look into the Bible with the most ordinary attention without feeling that we have got into a moral atmosphere quite different from that which we breathe in the world, and in the world's literature.”

World Looks Different Feelings Literature Attention Moral Impossible Ordinary Bible Breathe Atmosphere

Author:Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine

“Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea.”

World Art Ideas Political Literature Religious Moral Window Theater Presses Cinema Manifestation Display Posters Nazism Nazi Germany Rotting Mein Kampf

Book:Mein Kampf

Source: Mein Kampf

“I found that dance, music, and literature is how I made sense of the world... it pushed me to think of things bigger than lifes daily routines... to think beyond what is immediate or convenient.”

Thinking World Made Found Literature Bigger Convenient Dance Music Daily Routines

Author:Mikhail Baryshnikov

“Every life is narrow. Our only escape is not to run away, but to learn to love the people we are and the world in which we find ourselves.”

People World Running Life Is Literature Running Away

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.”

“I'm into books – I love literature, so I toyed with the idea of being an English teacher. I had a fantastic English teacher at school. I think great English teachers make the world go round.”

Thinking World Book Ideas School Literature Teacher Rounds Fantastic English Teacher Love Literature

Author:Taron Egerton

“I fell even more deeply in love with Tolkiens legendarium after studying Old English literature at uni, as I got a sense of the historical events and cultures that Tolkien used to create his world. My favourite of his imaginary locations is Lothlorien.”

World Used Culture Literature Study Events Historical Favourite Imaginary Location English Literature Old English Historical Events Deeply In Love

Author:Samantha Shannon

“The immediate success of the war poem anthologies ... proved that the war had aroused in a new public an ear for contemporary verse ... There has never before, in the world's history, been an epoch which has tolerated and even welcomed such a flood of verse as has been poured forth over Great Britain during the last three years.”

World Years Has Beens War Lasts Poetry Three Literature Ears Contemporary Britain Three Years Verses Flood Great Britain Epoch Anthology

Author:Edmund Gosse

“A child playing with dolls may shed heartfelt tears when his bundle of rags and scraps becomes deathly ill and dies ... So we may come to an understanding of language as playing with dolls: in language, scraps of sound are used to make dolls and replace all the things in the world.”

World May Children Used Poetry Dies Literature Language Understanding Sound Tears Ill Shed Dolls Heartfelt Scrap Rags Bundles Children Playing

Author:Velimir Khlebnikov

“A great number of the disappointments and mishaps of the troubled world are the direct result of literature and the allied arts. It is our belief that no human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate.”

World Humans Art Literature Belief Energy Human Beings Results Numbers Fantasy Direct Disappointment Inadequate Mishaps

Author:Christopher Hampton

“National literature does not mean much these days; now is the age of world literature, and every one must contribute to hasten thearrival of that age.”

World Mean Doe Age Literature These Days Internationalism World Literature

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“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

“But O, sick children of the world, Of all the many changing things In dreary dancing past us whirled, To the cracked tune that Chronos sings, Words alone are certain good.”

World Children Past Certain Time Literature Language Sick Dancing Tunes Cracked Dreary Sick Children

Book:When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales

Source: When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales

“Of all human events, perhaps, the publication of a first volume of verses is the most insignificant; but though a matter of no moment to the world, it is still of some concern to the author.”

World Firsts Humans Stills Matter Moments Poetry Literature Events Poet Concern Verses Volume Insignificant Publication

Book:Published Poems: The Writings of Herman Melville

Source: Published Poems: The Writings of Herman Melville

“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

“... not only dowomen sufferindignities in daily life, but the literature of the world proclaims their inferiority and divinely decreed subjection in all history, sacred and profane, in science, philosophy, poetry, and song.”

World Philosophy Song Literature History Sacred Daily Life Inferiority Profane Subjection

Author:Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Science begins with the world we have to live in, accepting its data and trying to explain its laws. From there, it moves toward the imagination: it becomes a mental construct, a model of a possible way of interpreting experience. The further it goes in this direction, the more it tends to speak the language of mathematics, which is really one of the languages of the imagination, along with literature and music. Art, on the other hand, begins with the world we construct, not with the world we see. It starts with the imagination, and then works toward ordinary experience.”

World Way Trying Art Hands Moving Law Science Literature Speak Language Imagination Accepting Models Ordinary Mathematics Data Constructs Interpreting Literature And Music

Author:Northrop Frye

“There is a clear acknowledgement all over the world that we should not teach people to read and then to leave them without literature. For they would then relapse into a dreary and ultimately dangerous state of half-education, in which they would be easily satisfied by crude semi-pictorial approximations of the strip cartoon and by the abundant supply of degenerate literature which destroys, rather than promotes, a capacity to face the problems of the world with skill and courage”

“Literature provides us with experiences it would not be wise or possible to introduce into our own world and thus enlarges our understanding of the world.”

World Literature Understanding Wise Introducing Being Wise

Author:Louise Rosenblatt

“The Iranian people were converted to Islam not very much longer after the conquest of the Arab world by Islam, but they refused to adopt the Arabic language, and it's a great point of pride to them that Persian culture and the Persian language and Persian literature survived the conversion to Islam. And the conversion to Islam also was for most of them not the Sunni majority form, but the Shia one. So there's a great discrepancy between Iranian society and many other of what we think of as Arab Muslim States and systems.”

“Kim Newman's Anno Dracula is back in print, and we must celebrate. It was the first mash-up of literature, history and vampires, and now, in a world in which vampires are everywhere, it's still the best, and its bite is just as sharp. Compulsory reading, commentary, and mindgame: glorious.”

World Firsts Stills Reading Literature Celebrate Vampire Glorious Print Bites Commentary Kim Compulsory Newman Mash Up Literature History

Author:Neil Gaiman

“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

“That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters.”

Men World Kind Has Beens Matter Spirit Literature Language Pay Accepting Doubt Prepared Flesh Tribute Martyrdom

Author:Anthony Burgess

“Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.”

World May Dream Happiness Literature Objects This World Caught Pursuit Geese Wild Geese

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

“What we call real estate - the solid ground to build a house on - is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.”

World Real Literature House This World Shame Foundation Guilt Property Broads Estates Real Property

Book:Complete Novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition): Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun, The Dolliver Romance, Septimius Felton, Grimshawe's Secret and Biography

Source: Complete Novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition): Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun, The Dolliver Romance, Septimius Felton, Grimshawe's Secret and Biography

“Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, this it overflows upon the outward world.”

World Love Life Heart Literature Born Sunshine Filling Radiance Slumber Overflow

Book:Nathaniel Hawthorne: Collected Novels: Scarlet Letter / House of Seven Gables / Blithedale Romance / Fanshawe / Marble Faun: Library of America #10

Source: Nathaniel Hawthorne: Collected Novels: Scarlet Letter / House of Seven Gables / Blithedale Romance / Fanshawe / Marble Faun: Library of America #10

“The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.”

Men World Happiness Joy Literature Limits Ancient Ill Impulse Ease Happy Man

Author:Nathaniel Hawthorne