Quotes About Literature

It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.

Literature is the memory of humanity.

Literature in its most comprehensive sense is the autobiography of humanity.

Books are the carriers of civilization... Books are humanity in print.

We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.

Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people - those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food.

A great library contains the diary of the human race.

Literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity.

Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality.

Do you remember any great poet that ever illustrated the higher fields of humanity that did not dignify the use of wine from Homer on down?

Much of the academy on the humanities side, English departments in particular, no longer write what can pass for normal English.

That's the trouble with good writers. Only the bad ones make you want to do the human thing and look away.

The sight of parents, children and grandparents all descending on a tented field to enjoy the pleasure of ideas and books renews my faith in humanity.

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.

A literary academic can no more pass a bookstore than an alcoholic can pass a bar.

Ninety percent of everything is crap.

Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers, I'd be a politician.

I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education.

That isn't writing at all, it's typing.

It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

If there were a Mount Rushmore of American humor, Terry Southern would be the mountain they'd carve it from

And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.