Quotes About Literature

Our myriad-minded Shakespeare.

Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.

There is no such thing as a worthless book though there are some far worse than worthless; no book that is not worth preserving, if its existence may be tolerated; as there may be some men whom it may be proper to hang, but none should be suffered to starve.

Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.

Do you even know the difference between a girder and a joist?' he asks pompously. 'Ah, well, yes,' answers the Irishman in his laconic way. 'Goethe wrote Faust and Joyce wrote Ulysses.

The greatest tragedies were written by the Greeks and Shakespeare...neither knew chocolate.

I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.

Your disbelief is a later novel emerging in the long, long shadow of an earlier one—

and white wrappers, and this only changed in the 1860s. But Uncle Allan is quite taken with Dickens's and Thackeray's

I thought I might go to the Cervecería Alemana on Plaza de Santa Ana.

Saya sama sekali tidak suka dikontrakkan. Soalnya, tidak jelas keluarga macam apa yang akan tinggal. Kalau yang menghuni saya nanti amat sangat berengsek, tidak suka membaca cerita pendek, tidak berpengetahuan, tidak intelek, dan suka masak jengkol, apa saya bisa protes dan mengusirnya?

niin kuin Lesboksen runoilija, kaikkia muita etevämpi

In Ancient Greek literature male poets tend not simply to portray women as lecherous but to attribute to them a species of lust different from that of males: a subhuman and automatic reflex, an animalistic urge. Sappho is important because she gives a fulle human voice to female desire for the first time in Western history. Since she defiantly chooses the quintessential love-object Helen of Troy as her freethinking agent, she seems fully conscious of the revolutionary claim she is making.

Every writer is first a reader, and what we read matters.

I can't bear literary snobbery.

Edinburgh is alive with words.

One of Scotland's most important cultural exports - stories.

Scotland consistently produces world-class writers.

Many existing top 20 Scottish writers have flourished in part because of good turns done by institutions, arts community, libraries and bookshops.

Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer's job.

The writing talent of Edinburgh is textured - we have poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, dramatists and more.

When you think about the period in which Agatha Christie's crime novels were written, they are actually quite edgy for the time.

Molly Bloom is simply the most sensuous woman in literature.

Like good reading skills, good writing skills require immersion and imaginative engagement.