Quotes About Literature

Goodbye, Mr. Chips!' was first submitted by James Hilton to the British Weekly in 1933, but it came to prominence when it was printed as the leading article of The Atlantic in April 1934.

With regard to the work itself, I dare not venture a judgment, for I do not understand it.

David McKay, 1900. Wolfe, Thomas. Look Homeward, Angel. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1929. Yeats, William Butler. A Vision

Indeed, it was not unusual for the dais to be littered with panties and boxer shorts after one of Branwell's talks at the MLA.

I live in a library now, surrounded by the greatest works of literature in the world, but I'm here to tell you, reader, literature is not the foundation of civilization. The foundation of civilization is hot water. Civilization is plumbing.

Old soldiers never die, they write novels.

The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

Have read little and understood less.

When I die, Dublin will be written on my heart.

Life is too short to read a bad book

bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-nuk! [A sound which represents the symbolic thunderclap associated with the fall of Adam and Eve.]

I've been working hard on [Ulysses] all day, said Joyce. Does that mean that you have written a great deal? I said. Two sentences, said Joyce. I looked sideways but Joyce was not smiling. I thought of [French novelist Gustave] Flaubert. You've been seeking the mot juste? I said. No, said Joyce. I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence.

I'll tickle his catastrophe.

For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.

The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.

I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man for that seems to me a harsh but not unjust description

Quotations every day of the year.

Mother indulgent. Said I have a queer mind and have read too much. Not true. Have read little and understood less.

Puck Mulligan footed featly, trilling: I HARDLY HEAR THE PURLIEU CRY OR A TOMMY TALK AS I PASS ONE BY BEFORE MY THOUGHTS BEGIN TO RUN ON F. M'CURDY ATKINSON, THE SAME THAT HAD THE WOODEN LEG AND THAT FILIBUSTERING FILIBEG THAT NEVER DARED TO SLAKE HIS DROUTH, MAGEE THAT HAD THE CHINLESS MOUTH. BEING AFRAID TO MARRY ON EARTH THEY MASTURBATED FOR ALL THEY WERE WORTH. Jest on. Know thyself.

No, it did a lot of other things, too. [turning down fan who asked to kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses

He read the verses backwards but then they were not poetry.

And, as a mere matter of ficfect, I tell of myself how I popo possess the ripest littlums wifukie around the globelettes globes (...)

the stone for my month a nice aquamarine