Quotes About Literature

I was always fascinated by the fact that you could take paper and ink and create worlds, images, characters. It seemed like magic.

Sunt înc?rcat cu amintiri ca un m?r, în toamn?. Scutura?i pomul ?i, dac? nu cad destule fructe, da?i cu pietre în el, sau, ?i mai bine, lovi?i-i fiecare creang? cu pr?jina. Pentru mine, amintirile sunt o grea povar?. Iau de pe inima mea o parte din aceast? povar? cu fiecare carte pe care o scriu.

Books have the power to create, destroy or change civilizations."

Life itself today has lost its plane reality: it is projected, not along the old fixed points, but along the dynamic coordinates of Einstein, of revolution. In this new projection, the best-known formulas and objects become displaced, fantastic, familiar-unfamiliar. This is why it is so logical for literature today to be drawn to the fantastic plot, or to an amalgam of reality and fantasy.

Truth is the first thing that present-day literature lacks. The writer has drowned himself in lies, he is too accustomed to speak prudently, with a careful look over his shoulder.

It is not possible to build on negative emotions. Genuine literature will come only when we replace hatred for man with love for man.

In literary and art criticism there are two criteria, the political and the artistic.

In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.

The Book of Chuang Tzu is like a travelogue. As such, it meanders between continents, pauses to discuss diet, gives exchange rates, breaks off to speculate, offers a bus timetable, tells an amusing incident, quotes from poetry, relates a story, cites scripture. To try and make it read like a novel or a philosophical handbook is simply to ask it, this travelogue of life, to do something it was never designed to do. And always listen out for the mocking laughter of Chuang Tzu.

Attitudosis cannot survive a strong, steady dose of uplifting literature or a regular donation of your time to a good cause. Make eye contact with someone who doesn't expect it and then give her your best smile. When you are willing to improve your attitude and you take action to do so, you'll enjoy life even more.

There was that special smell made up of paper, ink, and dust; the busy hush; the endless luxury of thousands of unread books. Best of all was the eager itch of anticipation as you went out the door with your arms loaded down with books.

I don't write books for people to be friends with the characters. If you want to find friends, go to a cocktail party.

Besides, I always feel safer when I've got words against my heart.

A writer creates wings of words and lets them fly in the sky of readers' minds.

A writer uses his pen as a gun to kill readers.

There is no better adviser than a good book.

Good literature is not the sole key to a sustained livable future for all, but it is certainly one of the keys

Fiction is a wonderful home for the reach of the mind.

We were talking about The Bell Jar, because we were sixteen, and we wanted to be depressed in New York.

A man [Joyce] whose earliest stories appeared next to the manure prices in the Irish Homestead knew that columns of prose, like columns of shit, could both recultivate the earth.

Our national poet WB Yeats said that every Irish writer had a decision to take: whether to express Ireland or exploit it. In his day, the choice lay between expressing the nation to itself or exploiting it for the amused condescension of a mainly overseas audience. Holding a mirror up to the people was a risky business: many, seeing an unflattering image, were inclined to smash the glass in anger.

After Homer and Dante, is a whole century of creating worth one Shakespeare?

But it seems to me inevitable that any person who gives thoughtful and imaginative attention to literature must be awakened in his sensibilities, enlarged in his sympathies, sharpened in his critical faculties.

When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years.