Quotes About Literature

I loved idiot paintings, tops of doors, decors, saltimbanques, canvases, signboards, popular engravings, obsolete literature, church Latin, badly-spelled pornographic works, novels by our grandmothers, fairy tales, little children's books, old operas, folk refrains, popular rhythms. —Rimbaud, "A Season in Hell

A great deal has been written on the question of how to motivate industrial workers. Presumably such literature arises because so many jobs have been made so trivial that few people can find any meaning at all in them.

A great deal has been written on the question of how to motivate industrial workers. Presumably such literature arises because so many jobs have been made so trivial that few people can find any meaning at all in them. It may be that techniques of management alone can't cure the problem. But clearly, for even the most potentially interesting jobs to be meaningful, there must be managers who are willing to throw away the management handbooks and take some risks.

bir yazar?n edebiyat okumas?n?n bir at bak?c?s?n?n at pisli?iyle u?ra?mas?ndan farks?zd?r (...)

there were more critics than painters, more publishers than writers, more teachers than practitioners.

You need a good memory to use the library. How else do you find a book again after you've read it?" - Tayend

A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would have not written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations.

Translation is the art of failure.

The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.

If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things.

Since I became a novelist I have discovered that I am biased. Either I think a new novel is worse than mine and I don't like it, or I suspect it is better than my novels and I don't like it.

I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.

Chi non legge, a 70 anni avrà vissuto una sola vita: la propria. Chi legge avrà vissuto 5000 anni: c'era quando Caino uccise Abele, quando Renzo sposò Lucia, quando Leopardi ammirava l'infinito… perché la lettura è una immortalità all'indietro.

The visitor enters and says, What a lot of books! Have you read them all? ...The best answer is the one always used by Roberto Leydi: And more, dear sir, many more, which freezes the adversary and plunges him into a state of awed admiration. But I find it merciless and angst-generating. Now I have fallen back on the riposte: No, these are the ones I have to read by the end of the month. I keep the others in my office.

For the male who dominates and writes, or by writing dominates, the woman has always been portrayed with hostility from the earliest times. Let us not be deceived by angelic descriptions of women. On the contrary, precisely because great literature is dominated by sweet, gentle creatures, the world of satire—which is that of the popular imagination—continually demonizes the woman, from antiquity, through the Middle Ages, and up to modern times.

For two years I have refused to answer idle questions on the order of Is your novel an open work or not? How should I know? That is your business, not mine. Or With which of your characters do you identify? For God's sake, with whom does an author identify? With the adverbs, obviously.

Dostoevsky was writing about losers. The main character of The Iliad, Hector, is a loser. It's very boring to talk about winners. The real literature always talks about losers. Madame Bovary is a loser. Julien Sorel is a loser. I am doing only the same job. Losers are more fascinating. Winners are stupid … because usually they win by chance

In the years when I discoverd the Abbé Vallet volume, there was a widespread conviction that one should write only out of a commitment to the present, in order to change the world. Now, after ten years or more, the man of letters (restored to his loftiest dignity) can happily write out of pure love of writing.

And this? Aldhelm of Malmesbury. Listen to this page: 'Primitus pantorum procerum poematorum pio potissimum paternoque presertim privilegio panegiricum poemataque passim prosatori sub polo promulgatas.' ... The words all begin with the same letter! The men of my islands are all a bit mad, William said proudly.

Books always speak of other books.

The library is testimony to truth and to error

A library's ideal function is to be a little bit like a bouquiniste's stall, a place for trouvailles .

I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer isn't aware of.

But this lump does not absolve me, because I got it through heedlessness, not though courage. I run my tongue over my lip and what do I do? I write. But bad literature brings no redemption.