Finnish Literature Quotes

It is said, once a wise man from the far North told me; it is said that there are in certain parts of Scandinavia cities within cities like there are circles within circles; existent yet invisible. And those cities are inhabited by creatures more terrible than imagination can create : man-shaped but man-devouring, as black and as silent as the night they prowl in. ~ Johanna Sinisalo

I should point out, creating one's own style, as much as is required to illustrate one of the aspects, the golden seam of language, involves beginning again at once, in a different manner, adopting the guise of a pupil when one risked becoming pedantic - thus by a shrugging of one's shoulders, disconcerting some with their genuflecting stance, and immortalizing oneself in multiple, impersonal, or even anonymous forms in response to the gesture of arms raised in stupefaction. ~ Stephane Mallarme

I've seen middle grade books criticized by adult readers for leaving things for the reader to figure out, for not having perfect happily-ever-after endings. They get knocked for being too depressing, for using too many big words, for featuring parental characters who are too clueless. Girl protagonists are "too angry" or "too self-absorbed." The issues raised are "too heavy," the books "too earnest," "too quiet," "too hard," "too far-reaching," "too strange," and it is all too too much for the reader.

Except it's never the readers themselves saying these things.

Our critical discourse in middle grade is sometimes much more about what the reviewer believes children's books should be rather than about engaging with the book itself and the literature as a whole. When we say a book is "too sad," "too scary," "too complicated;" when we demand that endings are perfectly happy and all tied up; when we demand that the themes not be too weighty or the characters not face too much hardship; we are projecting our own biases onto the book, and using them to prescribe what books for this age range can or cannot do. This is nannying, not literary criticism - and it doesn't give kids much credit. ~ Anne Ursu

For my part, I love to give myself up to the illusion of poetry. A hero of fiction that never existed is just as valuable to me as a hero of history that existed a thousand years ago. ~ Washington Irving

Little in his brief life was lost on him; there are premonitions of Nineteen Eighty-Four even in his memoir of schooldays 'Such, Such Were the Joys'. Experiences in the colonies and the BBC can be seen to have furnished raw materials; so indeed can his reading of Evgeny Zamyatin's We and other dystopian literature from the early days of Stalinism. But the transcendent or crystallising moment undoubtedly occurred in Spain, or at any rate in Catalonia. This was where Orwell suffered the premonitory pangs of a man living under a police regime: a police regime ruling in the name of socialism and the people. For a Westerner, at least, this epiphany was a relatively novel thing; it brushed the sleeves of many thoughtful and humane people, who barely allowed it to interrupt their preoccupation with the 'main enemy', fascism. But on Orwell it made a permanent impression. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Unlike sciences, literature as art relies on societal acceptance of a certain vocabulary. ~ Jimenez Lai

The great standard of literature as to purity and exactness of style is the Bible. ~ Hugh Blair

The wisdom of our ancestors is immortal. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I don't know anyone who remembers meeting their parents when they were a baby so i'm just like everybody else. -Zoey (100% Real) ~ Tara Michener

States of soul rightly expressed, as the poet expresses them in moments of pure inspiration, retain forever the power of creating like states. It is this that makes genuine literature a vital force. ~ John Lancaster Spalding

Her works are said to be too far from reality to be considered real literature. "Why doesn't she write about life?" the people of Rabbit Back ask. ~ Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen

Literary theory has become a parody of science, generating its own arcane jargon. In the process, tragically, it discourages love of literature for its own sake. ~ Nancy Pearcey

Virginity is the ideal of those who want to deflower. ~ Karl Kraus

Winning Nobel imposed on me a lifestyle to which I am not used and which I would not have preferred. ~ Naguib Mahfouz

That's why I've just gone on … collecting this particular kind of stuff – what you might call riff-raff. There's not a book here, Lawford, that hasn't at least a glimmer of the real thing in it – just Life, seen through a living eye, and felt. As for literature, and style, and all that gallimaufry, don't fear for them if your author has the ghost of a hint of genius in his making. ~ Walter De La Mare

Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law ... . They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission. - Michael Ledeen, The War Against the Terror Masters, 2002 ~ Naomi Klein

It seems to me as I reviewed the literature that, with few exceptions, the more confident were the prescriptions about how to behave with ethics and integrity, the further removed was the author from the life and work of the everyday manager. ~ Steve Kerr

I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness. And they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy ... or they become legend. ~ Jim Harrison

Grigoryevich...Not that he had any real talent himself - but what a lot of deaths of talented people he had witnessed. Young physicists and historians, specialists in ancient languages, philosophers, musicians, young Russian Swifts and Erasmuses - how many of them he had seen put on their "wooden jackets." Prerevolutionary literature had often lamented the fate of serf actors, musicians, and painters. But who was there today to write about the young men and women who had never had the chance to write their books and paint their paintings? The Russian earth is indeed fertile and generous. She gives birth to her own Platos, to her own quick-witted Newtons - but how casually and terribly she devours these children of hers. ~ Vasily Grossman

Oratory is, after all, the prose literature of the savage. ~ George Saintsbury

In literature we require distinction, charm, beauty and imaginative power. We don't want to be harrowed and disgusted with an account of the doings of the lower orders. ~ Oscar Wilde

All great characters, great icons, in literature are a bit of a riddle, and that's the reason we go back to them over and over. ~ David Lagercrantz

A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man. ~ Samuel Johnson

But they who give straight judgements to strangers and to those of the land and do not transgress what is just, for them the city flourishes and its people prosper. ~ Hesiod

I don't want to be involved in endless media gossip. ~ Kate Adie

When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package. ~ John Ruskin

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

For those who write memoirs, memory is not a mere recollection of facts; it is a ragbag we pick through, salvaging scraps to craft into literature. We take half-remembered events and stitch them together to form a larger story that will, we hope, resonate with others and help them make sense of their own" - Erika Schikel ~ Rossandra White

I will never see the day where I choose to fall upon my own sword of refuge. In knowing this, I also know that you will never ultimately defeat me; for my life is my own, and I will see to it accordingly. ~ Danish Sayanee

The concept of modernity in literary history was also related to the relation each Indian language and literature developed with English. Sanskrit and Persian literary models were labelled as traditional and medieval, and those found in English, irrespective of any period, as modern (page 22) ~ Francesca Orsini

For all the talk about the merging of film and video game, and for all its inevitability, perhaps the secret of true convergence lies not in an external reality , but in an internal truth: What kids seek from video games is what we all seek from our own distractions--be they movies, radio, comic books, literature, or art: an escape from the mundane to the sublime, where our imaginations make of us heroes, lovers, warriors, and gods. ~ Devin C. Griffiths

Secret families are really the bedrock issue of Western literature. ~ Tayari Jones