Spanish Literature Quotes

Younger than Morini and Pelletier, Espinoza studied Spanish literature, not German literature, at least for the first two years of his university career, among other sad reasons because he dreamed of being a writer. ~ Roberto Bolano

In French literature, you can choose a la carte; in Spanish literature, there is only the set meal. ~ Jose Bergamin

Tell me something from Spanish literature," Schiele said.
"I'll give you a line from my favorite novel. 'Los seres humanos no nacen para siempre el dia en que sus madres los alumbran, sino que la vida los obliga a parirse a si mismos una y otra vez.'"
("Humans are not born forever on the day their mothers have them; life necessitates giving birth to themselves over and over again.") ~ Gabrielle Zevin

There is bound to be someone driven mad by love who will give you the chance to study the effects of gold cyanide on a cadaver. And when you do find one, observe with care, they almost always have crystals in their heart ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Each people behaves as if it had reached the end of history. ~ Nuria Amat

Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca. ~ W.S. Merwin

As much as any contemporary writer, Murakami grasps the bewildering fluidity of commoditized life. ~ Japan Foundation

Ever'body's askin' that. "What we comin' to?" Seems to me we don't never come to nothin'. Always on the way. ~ John Steinbeck

I suppose it's true that most great television, literature, and other forms of high art (and basic cable) benefit from a little hindsight. 'M.A.S.H.' comes to mind. So does 'The Iliad.' ~ Kevin Bleyer

Children's literature is considerably more functional than a good portion of adult literature. If I were cynical, I might say: Children's books are written to be read; adult books are written to be talked about at cocktail parties.
There may be more truth that cynicism in that statement. My impression is that many adult books are written only to shock the reader (a short term goal, since shock quickly turns into boredom) or as calisthenics for the author's ego.
On the other hand, children's literature seems an area where books function as they were meant to; where they amaze, delight, and move our emotions. We can respect and admire any number of current adult books, but I find it hard to love them. ~ Lloyd Alexander

You aren't in the ivy halls of your miserable literature pursuit now. Without wasting more time, will thou cometh to the pointeth? Dost thou wanteth us to stayeth or leaveth? ~ Pawan Mishra

To say more while saying less is the secret of being simple. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

It's funny how you never think about the women you've had. It's always the ones who get away that you can't forget. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

She had a strong, if erroneous, conviction of her own futility, and wished she had never come out of her backwater, where nothing happened except art and literature, and where no one ever got married or succeeded in remaining engaged. ~ E.M. Forster

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Every successful person I have heard of has done the best he could with the conditions as he found them, and not waited until next year for better. ~ E.W. Howe

The classic literature is always modern. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies. ~ Julian Barnes

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

These ladies are not stupid, or ignorant. Mrs. Thompson can read both Latin and Spanish, and Ms. Voigtlander is a certified speech therapist who once explained to me that the strange gulping sound that makes NBC's Tom Brokaw so distracting to listen to is an actual speech impediment called a glottal L. It was one of the ladies out in the kitchen supporting Mrs. R - - who pointed out that 11 September is the anniversary of the Camp David Accords, which was certainly news to me. What ~ David Foster Wallace

I believe that by releasing "passing interest/low keepsake-value literature" from the burden of physicality, you are actually releasing the words from their worst liability: the price and inconvenience of actual bookness. ~ John Hodgman

For Tolkien's taste there were too few dragons in ancient literature, indeed by his count only three – the Miðgarðsorm or 'Worm of Middle-earth' which was to destroy the god Thor at Ragnarök, the Norse Doomsday; the dragon which Beowulf fights and kills at the cost of his own life; and Fafnir, who is killed by the Norse hero Sigurd. ~ Tom Shippey

Without charm there can be no fine literature, as there can be no perfect flower without fragrance. ~ Arthur Symons

In poetry, even discourse about doubts must be cast in a discourse that cannot be doubted. ~ Mikhail Bakhtin

We are living in 1937, and our universities, I suggest, are not half-way out of the fifteenth century. We have made hardly any changes in our conception of university organization, education, graduation, for a century - for several centuries. ~ H.G.Wells

What matters is the need to move from the rigidity of national stereotypes towards something more truly human; what matters is to discover the riches of human hearts and souls; what matters is the human content of poetry and science, the universal charm and beauty of architecture; what matters is the magnanimity of a nation's leaders and historical figures. only by exalting what is truly human, only by fusing the national with what is universally human, can try dignity - and true freedom - be achieved.
It is the struggle for freedom of thought and expression, the struggle for a peasant's freedom to sow what he wants to sow, for everyone's freedom to enjoy the fruits of their own work - this is the true struggle for national dignity.
The only real triumph of national freedom is one that brings about the triumph of all human freedom.
For small nations and large nations alike, this is the only way forward.
And it goes without saying that the Russians too - as well as Armenians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Kalmyks and Uzbeks - must understand that it is precisely through renouncing the idea of their own national superiority that they can truly affirm the grandeur and dignity of their own people, of their own literature and science. ~ Vasily Grossman

This person has hoped and dreamed and now it is really happening and this person can hardly believe it. But believing is not an issue here, the time for faith and fantasy is over, it is really really happening. It involves stepping forward and bowing. Possibly there is some kneeling, such as when one is knighted. One is almost never knighted. But this person may kneel and receive a tap on each shoulder with a sword. Or, more likely, this person will be in a car or a store or under a vinyl canopy when it happens. Or online or on the phone. It could be an e-mail re: your knighthood. Or a long, laughing, rambling phone message in which every person this person has ever known is talking on a speakerphone and they are all saying, You have passed the test, it was all just a test, we were only kidding, real life is so much better than that. ~ Miranda July

Teachers, let me tell you, are born deceivers of the lowest sort, since what they want from life is impossible - time-freed, existential youth forever. It commits them to terrible deceptions and departures from the truth. And literature, being lasting, is their ticket. ~ Richard Ford

In his Comedy, Dante Alighieri names Virgil, with many tokens of respect, as his teacher, and yet as Herr Meinhard remarks, makes such ill use of him: clear proof that even in the days of Dante one praised the ancients without knowing why. This respect for poets one does not understand and yet wishes to equal is the source of the bad writing in our literature. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Let your boys test their wings. They may not be eagles, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't soar free. ~ C.J. Milbrandt

We possess the Canon because we are mortal and also rather belated. There is only so much time, and time must have a stop, while there is more to read than there ever was before. From the Yahwist and Homer to Freud, Kafka, and Beckett is a journey of nearly three millennia. Since that voyage goes past harbors as infinite as Dante, Chaucer, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, all of whom amply compensate a lifetime's rereadings, we are in the pragmatic dilemma of excluding something else each time we read or reread extensively. ~ Harold Bloom

Collect memories, not things.
Fill-up dreams, not pockets.
Rise above your calling and be the person you always wanted to be. ~ Akash Lakhotia

There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book. In adult literary fiction, stories are there on sufferance. Other things are felt to be more important: technique, style, literary knowingness ... The present-day would-be George Eliots take up their stories as if with a pair of tongs. They're embarrassed by them. If they could write novels without stories in them, they would. Sometimes they do. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them. We all need stories, but children are more frank about it. ~ Philip Pullman

My whole life, when I was growing up, not one race has ever accepted me, ... So I never felt connected or attached to any race specifically. I had a very American upbringing, I feel American, and I don't speak Spanish. So, to say that I'm a Latin actress, OK, but it's not fitting; it would be insincere. ~ Jessica Alba

Keynes was a voracious reader. He had what he called 'one of the best of all gifts – the eye which can pick up the print effortlessly'. If one was to be a good reader, that is to read as easily as one breathed, practice was needed. 'I read the newspapers because they're mostly trash,' he said in 1936. 'Newspapers are good practice in learning how to skip; and, if he is not to lose his time, every serious reader must have this art.' Travelling by train from New York to Washington in 1943, Keynes awed his fellow passengers by the speed with which he devoured newspapers and periodicals as well as discussing modern art, the desolate American landscape and the absence of birds compared with English countryside.54

'As a general rule,' Keynes propounded as an undergraduate, 'I hate books that end badly; I always want the characters to be happy.' Thirty years later he deplored contemporary novels as 'heavy-going', with 'such misunderstood, mishandled, misshapen, such muddled handling of human hopes'. Self-indulgent regrets, defeatism, railing against fate, gloom about future prospects: all these were anathema to Keynes in literature as in life. The modern classic he recommended in 1936 was Forster's A Room with a View, which had been published nearly thirty years earlier. He was, however, grateful for the 'perfect relaxation' provided by those 'unpretending, workmanlike, ingenious, abundant, delightful heaven-sent entertainers', Agatha Christie, Edgar Wallace and P. G. Wod ~ Richard Davenport-Hines

Black Beauty"

I paint my nails black,
I dye my hair a darker shade of brown
'Cause you like your women Spanish, dark, strong and proud
I paint the sky black
You said if you could have your way
You'd make a night time of today
So it'd suit the mood of your soul

Oh, what can I do?
Nothing, my sparrow blue
Oh, what can I do?
Life is beautiful but you don't have a clue
Sun and ocean blue
Their magnificence, it don't make sense to you

Black beauty, oh oh oh
Black beauty, oh oh oh

I paint the house black
My wedding dress black leather too
You have no room for light
Love is lost on you
I keep my lips red
The same like cherries in the spring
Darling, you can't let everything
Seem so dark blue

Oh, what can I do?
To turn you on or get through to you
Oh, what can I do?
Life is beautiful but you don't have a clue
Sun and ocean blue
Their magnificence, it don't make sense to you

Black beauty, oh oh oh
Black beauty, oh oh oh

Black beauty, ah ah
Black beauty, ah ah
Black beauty, ah ah ah ah
Black beauty, baby
Black beauty, baby

Oh, what can I do?
Life is beautiful but you don't have a clue
Sun and ocean blue
Their magnificence, it don't make sense to you

Black beauty, oh oh oh
Black beauty, oh oh oh
Black beauty, oh oh oh
Lana Del Rey

My parents were both Spanish-speakers and they used to speak to me and my siblings in Spanish and we'd answer them in English. ~ America Ferrera

We measure everything by ourselves with almost a necessary conceit. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

Outside books, we avoid colorful characters. ~ Mason Cooley

I must be doing something right. I've been around for a long time. ~ Geraldo Rivera

Violence commands both literature and life, and violence is always crude and distorted. ~ Ellen Glasgow

I think television often has dismissed younger people. They figure, well, they're not really watching news, that's not our audience. ~ Kurt Loder

The best kind of writing is that which comes from the authors soul. ~ Ndiritu Wahome

Four is a powerful figure in literature and physical form ~ Miles Teller

I speak Spanish because I grew up overseas in Spain, Uruguay and Argentina. ~ Bitsie Tulloch