Literary World Quotes

The hoary joke in the literary world, based on 'Dreams From My Father,' was that if things had worked out differently for Barack Obama, he could have made it as a writer. ~ James Fallows

We writers - we're the snowflakes of the literary world. We each have our own shape. ~ Alice Walker

The provincial intellectual is doomed to arguing at low level ... there is still no Australian literary world, not in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide. It is some consolation to realise that there is no literary world in Birmingham or Los Angeles either. I have heard there is one in Montreal, but I don't believe it. The literary world is in London and New York, the only cities big enough to sustain magazines which can afford to reject copy. ~ Clive James

When I became a poet, the Korean literary world expected women poets to sing passively of love. Naturally, this was not written anywhere, but this rule existed nonetheless. Consequently, I received plenty of serious criticism. ~ Kim Hyesoon

There's a socialist bias to the consensus of the literary world: a '30s mentality that says factory workers are more worthy of our attention. ~ Jay McInerney

Books had always been a comfort to her. More than comfort. There were times when reading came close to an addiction.

When things had been tough at home, Harriet's solution had been to remove herself from life and disappear. She'd chosen to be invisible. Sometimes physically, by hiding under the table, but sometimes psychologically by diving into a literary world unlike her own.

As a child she'd liked to sink into the pages and lose herself for hours at a time. When she was reading, she didn't just leave her own life behind, she stepped into someone else's. There were times when she'd read for hours without noticing the passage of time or the onset of darkness. When it grew too dark to read, she simply switched on her flashlight and read under the covers so that she didn't disturb her sister, who was sleeping in the next bed. At school, she carried her book around. When things were difficult, the weight of her bag would comfort her. It helped just to know the book was there, waiting for her. At various points in the day she'd feel the edges bump against her thigh, reminding her of its existence. It was like having a friend close by, telling her I'm still here and we can spend time together later.

Even now, more than a decade on from that difficult time of her life, she found herself instinctively reaching for a book when she was stressed. Comfort was different things to different people. To some it was a bar of chocolate or a glass of wine, a r ~ Sarah Morgan

There are many Latino writers as talented as I am, but because we are published through small presses, our books don't count. We are still the illegal aliens of the literary world. ~ Sandra Cisneros

Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world. ~ Jasper Fforde

I don't know that I've gotten much feedback directly from the literary world; sometimes I doubt even the notion that there is a literary world, though I guess there is or was. ~ Jonathan Ames

I have always loved reading, so was interested in the literary world, and took many literary portraits. ~ Fay Godwin

I've always viewed myself as a brand. When I started 10 years ago, that was very controversial. 'Marketing' and 'PR' were dirty words for the literary world, but that has changed. Once the book is finished, I want as many people as possible to read it. ~ Camilla Lackberg

The literary world is made up of little confederacies, each looking upon its own members as the lights of the universe; and considering all others as mere transient meteors, doomed to soon fall and be forgotten, while its own luminaries are to shine steadily into immortality. ~ Washington Irving

Borges's world is as grounded in the changing nature of existence, that common predicament of the human species, as any literary world that has lasted. How could it be otherwise? No work of fiction that turns its back on life or that is incapable of illuminating life has ever attained durability. What is singular about Borges is that in his world the existential, the historical, sex, psychology, feelings, instincts, and so forth, have been dissolved and reduced to an exclusively intellectual dimension; and life, that boiling, chaotic turmoil, reaches the reader sublimated and conceptualized, transformed into literary myth through the filter of Borges, a filter of such perfect logic that it sometimes appears not to distill life to its essence but to suppress it altogether. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

There are so many reasons, but a big reason is that the literary world is simply too white. When there are more professors of color being employed by these institutions maybe there will be some change in the student populations. ~ Porochista Khakpour

Publishing is not, of course, dependent on the individual taste of the publisher," Perkins replied to one reader of Hemingway's novel. "He is under an obligation to his profession which binds him to bring out a work which in the judgment of the literary world is significant in its literary qualities and is a pertinent criticism of the civilization of the time. ~ A. Scott Berg

Living in South Korea as a girl meant living under a lot of discrimination and limitation. It was the same in my university and in the Korean literary world I am involved in. ~ Kim Hyesoon

He never ever thought of giving it up. Not once not ever.

He lead a hard life bereft of comforts but he loved his life. His struggles gave a meaning and a purpose to his life. His struggles inflamed the fire burning within his soul.

A fire that was burning within him and which would one day either burn him or burn the literary world! ~ Avijeet Das

At some point I started getting published, and experienced a meager knock-kneed standing in the literary world, and I started to get almost everything that many of you graduates are hoping for
except for the money. I got a lot of things that society had promised would make me whole and fulfilled
all the things that the culture tells you, from preschool on, will quiet the throbbing anxiety inside you. I got some stature, the respect of other writers, even a low-grade fame. The culture says these things will save you, as long as you also manage to keep your weight down. But the culture lies. ~ Anne Lamott

You know, I think some people fear that if they like the wrong kind of book, it will reflect poorly on them. It can go with genre, too. Somebody will say, "I won't read science fiction, or I won't read young adult novels" - all of those genres can become prisons. I always find it funny when the serious literary world will make a little crack in its wall and allow in one pet genre writer and crown them and say, "Well Elmore Leonard is actually a real writer." Or "Stephen King is actually a really good writer." Generally speaking, you know you're being patronized when somebody uses the word "actually ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

In the literary world today, Christianity has pretty well replaced sex as the present pet taboo, not only because Christianity is so often distorted by Christians as well as non-Christians, but because it is too wild and free for the timid. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

I've been in the art world for many years. But the sad fact is that most writers are visually prepubescent. Generally speaking, the literary world is provincial when it comes to matters of art. And it always has been. ~ Richard Grossman

The true elitists in the literary world are the ones who have become annoyed by literary ambition in any form, who have converted the very meaning of ambition so totally that it now registers as an act of disdain, a hostility to the poor common reader, who should never be asked to do anything that might lead to a pulled muscle. (What a relief to be told there's no need to bother with a book that might seem thorny, or abstract, or unusual.) The elitists are the ones who become angry when it is suggested to them that a book with low sales might actually deserve a prize ( ... ) and readers were assured that the low sales figures for some of the titles could only mean that the books had failed our culture's single meaningful literary test. ~ Ben Marcus

I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I've never had any formal training in writing. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Just another attempt by Rebecca to connect an everyday occurrence to the literary world."
- Adriana ~ Gina Marinello-Sweeney

The short story, I should point out, is perforce a labor of love in today's literary world; there's precious little economic incentive to write one ... ~ Lawrence Block

I don't know the literary world; I was scared of being confronted with famous names, not knowing what they had written. It was occupied territory I was entering. ~ John Le Carre

Dear Literary World, Sorry for breaking down your door ... I'll pay for that!!! Since I'm here and planning to stay a while, let me tell you some stories!! ~ C.K. Webb

After reading Edgar Allan Poe. Something the critics have not noticed: a new literary world pointing to the literature of the 20th Century. Scientific miracles, fables on the pattern A+ B, a clear-sighted, sickly literature. No more poetry but analytic fantasy. Something monomaniacal. Things playing a more important part than people; love giving away to deductions and other forms of ideas, style, subject and interest. The basis of the novel transferred from the heart to the head, from the passion to the idea, from the drama to the denouement. ~ Jules De Goncourt

"Little magazines" are, for the most part, the mayflies of the literary world. ~ Frederick Crews

I'd be doing it to screw the literary world. Those bastards all huddle in their gloomy cave and kiss each other's asses, and lick each other's wounds, and trip each other up, all the while spewing this pompous crap about the mission of literature. ~ Haruki Murakami

The bestselling novel taking the Ankh-Morpork literary world by storm was dedicated to Commander Samuel Vimes.
The title of the book was Pride and Extreme Prejudice. ~ Terry Pratchett

Only in rock music and the literary world you see so many ugly white guys with beautiful women. That says a lot about the women, their character. They're attracted to more than surface. ~ Sherman Alexie

The "literary world" was a place I was grateful for, and blessed, I thought, were those who could spend their lives there. ~ Osamu Dazai

I don't care about being a literary personality - that doesn't appeal to me, especially because the literary world doesn't appeal to me. I actually don't feel like I even belong in it. If this was high school, I would be sitting with the Goths, looking at everyone, being like, 'Whatever.' ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

The literary world is so full of pretension, and there's such an enormous gap between how seriously poets take themselves and how widely they're ignored by everybody else. ~ Billy Collins

My number-one website is brainpickings.org. It opens you up to different authors and gives insights into the literary world. Reading about the love letters novelist Vladimir Nabokov wrote to his wife Vera blew my mind. Fascinating. ~ Brie Larson

A KING WHO PLACED MIRRORS IN HIS PALACE

There lived a king; his comeliness was such
The world could not acclaim his charm too much.
The world's wealth seemed a portion of his grace;
It was a miracle to view his face.
If he had rivals,then I know of none;
The earth resounded with this paragon.
When riding through his streets he did not fail
To hide his features with a scarlet veil.
Whoever scanned the veil would lose his head;
Whoever spoke his name was left for dead,
The tongue ripped from his mouth; whoever thrilled
With passion for this king was quickly killed.
A thousand for his love expired each day,
And those who saw his face, in blank dismay
Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away-
To die for love of that bewitching sight
Was worth a hundred lives without his light.
None could survive his absence patiently,
None could endure this king's proximity-
How strange it was that man could neither brook
The presence nor the absence of his look!
Since few could bear his sight, they were content
To hear the king in sober argument,
But while they listened they endure such pain
As made them long to see their king again.
The king commanded mirrors to be placed
About the palace walls, and when he faced
Their polished surfaces his image shone
With mitigated splendour to the throne.

If you would glimpse the beauty we r ~ Attar Of Nishapur

I just totally do not believe in this sort of Bart Simpson character who infects so much of our literature and film and TV stuff nowadays, these know-it-all kids who seem to understand the hypocrisy of the adult world so thoroughly and can talk about it with such articulateness. That's bunk. ~ David Small

A stagecoach passed by on the road and went on;
And the road didn't become more beautiful or even more ugly.
That's human action on the outside world.
We take nothing away and we put nothing back, we pass by and we forget;
And the sun is always punctual every day.

(5/7/14) ~ Alberto Caeiro

What you do for yourself dies with you when you leave this world, what you do for others lives on forever. ~ Ken Robinson

If our life were an eternal standing by the window, if we could remain there forever, like hovering smoke, with the same moment of twilight forever painting the curve of the hills… If we could remain that way for beyond for ever! If at least on this side of the impossible we could thus continue, without committing an action, without our pallid lips sinning another word!

Look how it's getting dark!… The positive quietude of everything fills me with rage, with something that's a bitterness in the air I breathe. My soul aches… A slow wisp of smoke rises and dissipates in the distance… A restless tedium makes me think no more of you…

All so superfluous! We and the world and the mystery of both. ~ Fernando Pessoa

There's an imp inside me, and if I don't let him out to make some mischief now and then, the world just gets too damned dull. I hate feeling grumpy and bored. I'm an enthusiast, and the more dangerous my life becomes, the happier I am. ~ Paul Auster

From the flames she rises, a bold, resplendent warrior ready to bring the world to its knees and cast away those who do not revere their Goddess. Enrapturing all those whom she favours there is no escaping her beguiling sensuality. Enfolding him to her breast, she enslaves his tumescence within her warm embrace and he is lost, within her passion, for eternity... ~ Virginia Alison

People of different dispositions make the world go round. That's why it's insanity to try to be someone else. ~ Ufuoma Apoki

See, Drew, there are three kinds of males in this world: boys, guys, and men. Boys - like Billy - never grow up, never get serious. They only care about themselves, their music, their cars. Guys - like you - are all about numbers and variety. Like an assembly line, it's just one one-night stand after another. Then there are men - like Matthew. They're not perfect, but they appreciate women for more than their flexibility and mouth suction. ~ Emma Chase

The idea that global warming is the most important problem facing the world is total nonsense and is doing a lot of harm. ~ Freeman Dyson

I remembered those psychologists who said psychopaths made the world go around. They meant it: society was, they claimed, an expression of that particular sort of madness. ~ Jon Ronson

A school library is like the Bat Cave: it's a safe fortress in a chaotic world, a source of knowledge and the lair of a superhero.

True, the superhero is more likely to be wearing a cardigan than a batsuit, but still... ~ Tom Angleberger

The Love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the "Love that dare not speak its name," and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it. ~ Oscar Wilde

World" as thought through Heidegger's work would be the mutually achieved composite of meaning and matter; what is disclosed - that is, what presents itself to us through our doing, saying, and making - is disclosed as already fitted into material environments and holistic forms of significance. ~ Thomas Rickert

In all my experience along the dirtiest ways of this dirty little world, I have never met with such a thing as a trifle yet. ~ Wilkie Collins

The Spaniards are perfectly right to govern these barbarians of the New World and adjacent islands; they are in prudence, ingenuity, virtue, and humanity as inferior to the Spaniards as children are to adults and women are to men, there being as much difference between them as that between wild and cruel and very merciful persons, the prodigiously intemperate and the continent and tempered, and I daresay from apes to men ~ Juan Gines De Sepulveda

How can I be expected to believe that this same racial discrimination which has been the cause of so much injustice and suffering right through the years, should now operate here to give me a fair and open trial? ... consider myself neither morally nor legally obliged to obey laws made by a Parliament in which I am not represented. That the will of the people is the basis of the authority of government, is a principle universally acknowledged as sacred throughout the civilized world. ~ Nelson Mandela

The framers were wise in their generation and wanted to do the very best possible to secure their own liberty and independence, and that also of their descendants to the latest days. It is preposterous to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen contingencies. At the time of the framing of our constitution the only physical forces that had been subdued and made to serve man and do his labor, were the currents in the streams and in the air we breathe. Rude machinery, propelled by water power, had been invested sails to propel ships upon the waters and been set to catch the passing breeze – but the application of steam to propel vessels against both wind and current, and machinery to do all manner of work had not been thought of. The instantaneous transmission of messages around the world by means of electricity would probably that day have been attribute to witchcraft or a league with the Devil. Immaterial circumstances had changed as greatly as material ones. We could not and ought not to be rigidly bound by the rules laid down under circumstances so different for emergencies so utterly unanticipated. The fathers themselves would have been the first to declare that their prerogatives were not irrevocable. ~ Ulysses S. Grant

If you followed this economic crisis and you do not think that the world is getting flatter, you are not paying attention. We saw the entire global economy at one time acting totally in sync. The real truth is the world is even flatter than I thought. Our mortgage crisis is killing Deutsche Bank. You still don't think the world is flat? ~ Thomas Friedman

The voice of the Dreamer often pushes us to escape. When we listen to her voice, our dreams are held captive. We dream things shaped by heaven but twisted by the world, things of escape and vacation and eternal lounging. ~ Emily P. Freeman

Winning the world championship in '66 was really the pinnacle of the whole thing, because to win a championship with an Australian made engine was a fantastic feather in our cap ... ~ Jack Brabham

20 He said, Praise the name of God forever and ever, for he has all wisdom and power. 21 He controls the course of world events; he removes kings and sets up other kings. ~ Anonymous

I've done a great job at being universal in my stand-up, which is why, for 'Let Me Explain,' I toured all over the world. These movies I have coming out - 'Ride Along,' 'Grudge Match,' 'About Last Night,' 'Think Like a Man Too' - are putting me in a position to become universal on an even bigger scale. ~ Kevin Hart

The world is being created and destroyed in this very moment. Whoever you met will reappear, whoever you lost will return. Don't betray the grace that was bestowed on you. Understand what is going on inside you and you will understand what is going on inside everyone else. Don't imagine that I came to bring peace. I came with a sword. ~ Paulo Coelho

If some people would work on themselves more
than on others
They would make this world much better for life
Slobodan Boban Manic ~ Slobodan Boban Manic

If you really want to help the rest of the world, what you've got to do is encourage free markets, private property rights and the strong rule of law and get rid of the dictators in a lot of these countries. ~ Dave Brat

I always got nervous the nights we played in the World Series. First pitch, I was nervous. Then after that, forget it; I'd start playing. ~ Yogi Berra

Your perception of reality is not set in stone. It is flexible. If you are willing to work towards changing your perception, you can bend your reality. You can see a more positive life around you. You can see the beauty in the world. If you actively look for the good in the world, eventually your world will change. Look for the little things until the big things come into the picture. ~ Avina Celeste

World is beautiful but it is dangerous place to live, there is so much evil behind a normal person. ~ John Art

It does not take a great supernatural heroine or magical hero to save the world.
We all save it every day, and we all destroy it
in our own small ways
by every choice we make and every tiniest action resulting from that choice.
The next time you feel useless and impotent, remember what you are in fact doing in this very moment. And then observe your tiny, seemingly meaningless acts and choices coalesce and cascade together into a powerful positive whole.
The world
if it could
will thank you for it.
And if it does not ... well, a true heroine or hero does not require it. ~ Vera Nazarian

All the world's roads lead to the heart of the Warrior. ~ Paulo Coelho

I'm a Third World person. I grew up in an occupied zone [Greenville, South Carolina] and had to negotiate with the superpower, really the colonial power. ~ Jesse Jackson