Quotes About Literature

To my mind, nothing is as important as good writing, because in literature, the walls between people and cultures are broken down, and the things that plague us most–suspicion and fear of the other, and the tendency to see whole groups of people as objects, as monoliths of one cultural stereotype or another–are defeated.

He learned about life at sixteen, first from Dostoevsky and then from the whores of New Orleans.

By the way, Doc Edwards said. How's that book coming along? Oh, it's coming along. Fine. What's it about? Just what I'm writing down: one word after another. Good.

to remove a book from the period of its birth is like lifting a stone from a stream and watching it lose its luster in the palm of your hand.

It has become almost a cliché 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.

Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I'll show you a hypocrite ... If you are flying to an international congress of anthropologists or literary critics, the reason you will probably get there - the reason you don't plummet into a ploughed field - is that a lot of Western scientifically trained engineers have got their sum right.

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.

Real science can be hard but, like classical literature or playing the violin, worth the struggle.

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next. RALPH WALDO EMERSON

A more systematic study by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi 'found that among Nobel Prize laureates in the sciences, as well as those in literature, there was a remarkable degree of irreligiosity, as compared to the populations they came from'.51

The wolfish horror of the worst scriptural verses is cloaked under various forms of sheep's clothing: the words are not meant to be taken literally, they are 'metaphorical'.

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.

Bir ça??n dini, bir sonrakinin edebi eÄŸlencesidir. Ralph Waldo

And, for speakers of Arabic and Indian languages, knowledge of the Qur'an or the Bhagavad Gita is presumably just as essential for full appreciation of their literary heritage.

I have yet to see any good reason to suppose that theology (as opposed to biblical history, literature, etc.) is a subject at all.

I pity the people who don't like to read, because then they spend their whole lives stuck in this one world and dont get to discover any others.

He read and reread 'Ulysses'. He looked back at Amy. They were the first beautiful thing I ever knew, Dorrigo Evans said.

In Australia the Man Booker is sometimes seen as something of a chicken raffle. I just didn't expect to end up with the chicken.

Why do you love words so? he heard Amy ask. ... They were the first beautiful thing I ever knew, Dorrigo Evans said.

Much has been made about the death of the novel and the end of literature as it's seen to be assailed by technology, by the web, by the many and varied new forms of entertainment and culture. I don't share that pessimism because I think it is one of the great inventions of the human spirit.

Ulysses'. No one reads him anymore. No one reads anything anymore. They think Browning is a gun.

Richard Flanagan

A good book, he had concluded, leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.

He read and reread 'Ulysses'. The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.