Quotes About Literature

The great universal literature has always had a tragic relation with freedom. The Greeks renounced absolute freedom and imposed order on chaotic mythology, like a tyrant.

In England, literary pretence is more universal than elsewhere from our method of education.

I steer clear of books with ugly covers. And ones that are touted as 'sweeping,'_ 'tender' or 'universal.' But to the real question of what's inside: I avoid books that seem to conservatively follow stale formulas. I don't read for plot, a story 'about' this or that.

In the literature of France Moliere occupies the same kind of position as Cervantes in that of Spain, Dante in that of Italy, and Shakespeare in that of England. His glory is more than national - it is universal.

With literature, sometimes a book is presented in the media as being say, a Muslim story or an African story, when essentially it's a universal story which we can all relate to it, no matter what race or social background we come from.

I hate it when people don't recognize the work of women as being universal, or having any import to the world at large, as opposed to men's work, which is generally tends to be seen as more universal - men's writing about their own experience tends to be put in a broader context.

A writer is justly called 'universal' when he is understood within the limits of his civilization, though that be bounded by a country or an age.

It infuriates me that the work of white American writers can be universal and lay claim to classic texts, while black and female authors are ghetto-ized as 'other.'

I steer clear of books with ugly covers. And ones that are touted as 'sweeping,' 'tender' or 'universal.'

One of the reasons we all still read Jane Austen is because her books are about universal things which still matter today - love, money, family. They haven't gone out of fashion, so it's not throwing the baby out with the bathwater to rework her in a contemporary style.

The power of literature does not lie in resonance with the particular but the way that the particular speaks to a broader, more universal truth.

Every culture has contributed to maths just as it has contributed to literature. It's a universal language; numbers belong to everyone.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that M. Dirda is a sucker for anything bookish in the way of artwork.

You may take this as a general and central principle in criticism: that all science, literature or song, which recognizes conscious life as the ruling principle of the universe, is Christian.

But that incessant drive to be out there in the literary universe that was important to me when I was in my twenties, like going to a Paris Review party or whatever, that seems totally irrelevant now.

Narnia, Middle-earth and New York were my three fantasy universes when I was a kid.

I assume that - because you can get degrees in journalism from very reputable universities - I assume that people can be trained to be journalists. I've never been entirely certain that anyone can be trained to be a novelist in the same way.

Prior to the Civil War, most libraries were either privately owned or housed in universities or churches.

In India, writers are underpaid. Universities should start new courses to create more opportunities for them.

At Oxford University, I studied languages so I could read the great novels as they were originally written. I took what in the United States would be a double major in Russian and French, but I have to admit that the pressure of getting through so many books spoiled reading for me.

So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world.

I went to University College London and read English literature, then realised if you were interested in story and narrative, film was the way to go.

Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000.

I was not really aware of the dystopian genre before I read 'The Handmaid's Tale.' Many poets as well, like John Donne and Emily Dickinson, would be the influences; I specialized in Emily Dickinson at university. Both of those poets have really interesting ways of looking at life and death.