Why Literature Quotes

I see no reason in morality, why literature should not have as one of its intentions the arousing of thoughts of lust. It is one of the effects, perhaps one of the functions of literature to arouse desire, and I can discover no grounds for saying that sexual pleasure should not be among the objects of desire which literature presents to us, along with heroism, virtue, peace, death, food, wisdom, God, etc. ~ Lionel Trilling

As more and more norms disappear from social praxis, literature faces ever-growing difficulties. Its predicament is beginning to resemble that of a child who has discovered that his incredibly understanding parents will let him break with impunity all his toys, indeed everything in the house. The artist cannot create specific prohibitions for himself in order to attack them later in his work; the prohibitions must be real, and hence independent of the writer's choices. And since the relativization of cultural norms has not so far been able to disturb the given characteristics of human biology, that is where writers today seek the still perceptible points of resistance
which is why literature is preoccupied with the theme of sex. ~ Stanislaw Lem

A person who does not read, or reads little, or reads only trash, is a person with an impediment: he can speak much but he will say little, because his vocabulary is deficient in the means for self-expression.
This is not only a verbal limitation. It represents also a limitation in intellect and imagination. It is a poverty of thought, for the simple reason that ideas, the concepts through which we grasp the secrets of our condition, do not exist apart from words. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

Writing for money and reservation of copyright are, at bottom, the ruin of literature. No one writes anything that is worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject. What in inestimable boon it would be, if in every branch of literature there were only a few books, but those excellent! This can never happen as long as money is to be made by writing. It seems as though the money lay under a curse; for every author degenerates as soon as he begins to put a pen to paper in any way for the sake of gain. The best works of the greatest men all come from the time when they had to write for nothing or for very little. And here, too, that Spanish proverb holds good, which declares that honour and money are not to be found in the same purse--honra y provecho no caben en un saco. The reason why Literature is in such a bad plight nowadays is simply and solely that people write books to make money. A man who is in want sits down and writes a book, and the public is stupid enough to buy it. The secondary effect of this is the ruin of language. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing. ~ Irwin Shaw

Listen closely. There's a remote possibility that you might learn something: First, I don't give a damn if my work is commercial or not ... I'm the writer. If what I write is good, then people will read it. That's why literature exists. An author puts his heart and guts on the page. For your information, a good novel can change the world. Keep that in mind before you attempt to sit down at a typewriter. Never waste time on something you don't believe in yourself. ~ John Fante

Storytelling is how we survive, when there's no feed, the story feeds something, it feeds the spirit, the imagination. I can't imagine life without stories, stories from my parents, my culture. Stories from other people's parents, their culture. That's how we learn from each other, it's the best way. That's why literature is so important, it connects us heart to heart. ~ Alice Walker

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

There are many occasions in literature in which telling is far more effective than showing. ~ Francine Prose

Confidentiality is a virtue of the loyal, as loyalty is the virtue of faithfulness. ~ Edwin Louis Cole

Before we had airplanes and astronauts, we really thought that there was an actual place beyond the clouds, somewhere over the rainbow. There was an actual place, and we could go above the clouds and find it there. ~ Barbara Walters

Literature can be divided into two large families: the religious and the secular one. The first reveals the origin of stupidity, the second follows its evolution. ~ William C. Brown

I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction. ~ Georges Bataille

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. ~ Henry David Thoreau

The idea of stardom was difficult to grasp. It was like being schizophrenic; there was her, the woman on television, and the real me. ~ Jessica Savitch

Bad literature is a form of treason. ~ Joseph Brodsky

I live on good soup, not on fine words. ~ Moliere

Literature is not only a mirror; it is a map, a geography of the mind. ~ Margaret Atwood

The first one to bed always lit the candle, and the last one turned out the lamp ... The tradition had seen them through quite a bit by now, and Rebecca had come to love the candlelight, not only because it meant that Mike loved to see her just the way she was, which was incredibly liberating once you began to actually believe it, but also because the light just felt holy to her. It made the end of the day into a kind of prayer, whether they made love or just lay in each other's arms and chewed over the day's portion of craziness; and there was that beautiful little puff of "Amen" when they blew the candle out and settled into sleep. ~ Tim Farrington

I like the hip writers: Fitzgerald, the guy who committed suicide, Hemingway, all those guys. Some of them were alcoholics and drug addicts but they had fun. They were real people. They formed the culture of American literature. Hemingway admired Tolstoy, Tolstoy admired Pushkin, and Mailer admired Hemingway. It all flows down. The greats are all connected. One day I'm gonna write a book myself. The first chapter will be about what a rough deal my momma got. She believed in you guys and your society. ~ Mike Tyson

Conflict is the soul of literature. ~ Erica Jong

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature. ~ Jean Cocteau

To be fair to them, they were only after something that walled them off from the past and from people in general, not something that offered any connection that might prove painful or human. Thet wanted stories, I came to realise, in which they were already imprisoned, not stories in which they appeared along with the storyteller, accomplices in escaping. ~ Richard Flanagan

His spirit chaunged house and wente ther,
As I cam nevere, I kan nat tellen wher. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer

Don't be a time manager, be a priority manager. Cut your major goals into bite-sized pieces. Each small priority or requirement on the way to ultimate goal become a mini goal in itself. ~ Denis Waitley

In an age of global standardization, regional voices also remind both writer and reader that no life is lived generically. If the purpose of literature is truly, as the ancients insisted, to instruct and delight, then what better to understand and enjoy than the here and the now ? ~ Dana Gioia

Hundreds of versts of desolate, monotonous, sun-parched steppe cannot bring on the depression induced by one man who sits and talks, and gives no sign of ever going. ~ Anton Chekhov

A Pulitzer Prize is awaiting the journalist who can find an American who dies of hunger, and probably the Nobel Prize for literature as well. ~ Tom Bethell

If you read the literature of the great religions, time and time again you come across descriptions of what is usually referred to as "spiritual experience." You will find that in all the various traditions this modality of spiritual experience seems to be the same, whether it occurs in the Christian West, the Islamic Middle East, the Hindu world of Asia, or the Buddhist world. In each culture, it is quite definitely the same experience, and it is characterized by the transcendence of individuality and by a sensation of being one with the total energy of the universe. ~ Alan W. Watts

In this quiet corner, the best wild flowers grow, and the first peepers are heard in the spring, even before the snow melts. Here, owls call from the treetops in the early morning, and the irreverent crows hold their noisy conventions. Here, the mother deer has her fawn, and the migrating geese come to rest. It is here that the fox is safe from the hunters. ~ Alice Provensen

All vital truth contains the memory of all that for which it is not true. ~ D.H. Lawrence

I do think that our perception of reality is fragmentary, and in 20th-century literature, it's totally normal to not describe reality as something whole and completely transportable and explicable. That's been accepted in novels. But genre films always pretend that reality is transportable, which means that it is explicable. ~ Michael Haneke

The art teacher's scarlet book was called Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille. 'As the title suggests,' Mr Dunwoody saw the book'd caught my attention, 'it's about the history of opticians. What are you about? ~ David Mitchell

Medicine is my life, but literature is my mistress, and mysteries and poetry are my drugs of choice. ~ John A. Vanek

They grew; they did not talk about growing. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

Cats strongly believe that everywhere is designed for their comfort! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

We like to admit to only that which already glows, although it is nobler to support brightness before it glows, not afterwards. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

The most advertised commodity is not always intrinsically the best; but is sometimes merely the product of a company, with plenty of money to spend on advertising. ~ Emily Post