Quotes About Literature

Ai que prazer Nao cumprir um dever, Ter um livro para ler E não o fazer!

20 [56] That is the central error of a literary imagination: the idea that other people are like us and must therefore feel like us. Fortunately for humanity, each man is only himself and only the genius is given the ability to be others as well.

GörünüÅŸe bak?l?rsa uygarl?klar s?rf sanat ve edebiyat üretmek için var, kelimelerse onlardan bize kalan, bizimle konuÅŸan ÅŸeyler.

I write my literature as I write my ledger entries-carefully and indifferently. Next to the vast starry sky and the enigma of so many souls, the night of the unknown abyss and the chaos of nothing make sense-next to all this, what I write in the ledger and what I write on this paper that tells my soul are equally confined to the Rua dos Douradores, woefully little in the face of the universe's millionaire expanses.

Um dos poucos divertimentos intelectuais que ainda restam ao que ainda resta de intelectual na humanidade é a leitura de romances policiais.

En la vida hay que cometer inevitablemente todos los errores en primera persona, pero la literatura nos permite embellecerlos con aciertos ajenos...

La ciencia describe y explica la realidad, pero la literatura expresa lo que supone para nosotros formar parte de esa realidad.

libros que trepaban por las butacas como maleza en la jungla. Nuestro

Trellis wants his salutary book to be read by all. He realizes that purely a moralizing tract would not reach the public. Therefore he is putting plenty of smut into his book.

Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.

I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.

I hope you don't have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.

The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands. And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.

The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.

Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think university stifles writers. My opinion is that it doesn't stifle enough of them.

I don't think literature would be possible in a determined world. We might go through the motions but the heart would be out of it. Nobody could then 'smile darkly and ignore the howls.' Even if there were no Church to teach me this, writing two novels would do it. I think the more you write, the less inclined you will be to rely on theories like determinism. Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowledge.

So many people can now write competent stories that the short story is in danger of dying of competence.

I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at night, he wishes to read something that will lift up his heart. And it seems her heart had not been lifted up by anything of mine she had read. I think that if her heart had been in the right place, it would have been lifted up.

Poorly written novels -- no matter how pious and edifying the behavior of the characters -- are not good in themselves and are therefore not really edifying.

We Catholics are very much given to the Instant Answer. Fiction doesn't have any. It leaves us, like Job, with a renewed sense of mystery. St. Gregory wrote that every time the sacred text describes a fact, it reveals a mystery. That is what the fiction writer, on his lesser level, hopes to do.

The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning.

My mamma and I have interesting literary discussions like the following which took place over some Modern Library books that I had just ordered: SHE: "Mobby Dick. I've always heard about that." ME: "Mow-by Dick." SHE: "Mow-by Dick. The Idiot. You would get something called Idiot. What's it about?" ME: "An idiot.

Flannery O'Connor, in a note to the editor of Wise Blood that pertained to changes he wanted to make, wrote Perhaps I am prematurely arrogant . . .

You may ask, why not simply call this literature Christian? Unfortunately, the word Christian is no longer reliable. It has come to mean anyone with a golden heart. And a golden heart would be a positive interference in the writing of fiction.