Quotes About Literature

Books are big enough and powerful enough to define and contain identity.--Aaron Lansky

We didn't eat much", one woman told Aaron, "but we always bought a book. It was a necessity of life." The Book Rescuer

He is important for being the first writer to name the four elements:

I am very unhappy and have once again turned to great literature for solace. It's no surprise to me that intellectuals commit suicide, go mad or die from drink. We feel things more than other people. We know the world is rotten and that chins are ruined by spots.

I think Jane Austen should write something a bit more modern.

Will you lie to me and promise to read them? Books need to be read. The pages need to be turned.

Twenty-first-century American writers do not drink much.

The dictionary tells us that fiction is literature in the form of prose that describes imaginary events and people, is invention or fabrication, as opposed to fact. The dictionary tells us that the imaginary exists only in the imagination. Logic tells us that what exists only in the imagination does not exist in reality, or actuality, which the thesaurus tells us are the same thing.

Imogen was a bright girl naturally, but she had read so many novels that her brain was completely turned.

I think of myself as a realistic writer, not a creator of soap opera or melodrama.

Lastly, literature and philosophy both allow past idols to be resurrected with a frequency which would be truly distressing to a sober scientist.

If you like to read, sometimes it's interesting just to go and see what the reality is, of the word, of the seedy or not so seedy fiction writer, the drunk or sober poet... Sometimes you can go looking for illumination.

Literature and philosophy both allow past idols to be resurrected with a frequency which would be truly distressing to a sober scientist.

I admire American literature, both contemporary and classic - 'Moby-Dick' is just about the best book in the world - and I admire British literature for its insistence on dealing with social class. It may have been an influence.

I hope to be remembered for writing books about social justice that also have enough aesthetic value to endure as works of literature.

Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress.

I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature.

I was absolutely convinced that I wouldn't win the Nobel Prize. My impression was that the Nobel Prize in Literature was given to people more or less affiliated with, let's say, socialist ideas, and that was not my case.

It has become almost a cliche to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.

Fiction is socially meaningful.

The first author I met socially was Joyce Cary.

I certainly can't speak for all cultures or all societies, but it's clear that in America, poetry serves a very marginal purpose. It's not part of the cultural mainstream.

I grew up in a literary home and majored in French, English, and sociology. They all have served me well over the years.

Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.