Quotes About Literature

there exists around the written world opened by the work a multitude of other possible worlds, which we can complete by means of our images and our words. Denying oneself this work of completion in the name of some hypothetical fidelity to the work is bound to fail: we can indeed reject filling these gaps in a conscious way, but we cannot prevent our unconscious from finishing the work, according to its priorities and those of the era in which it was written.

Like language, books serve to express us, but also to complete us, furnishing, through a variety of excerpted and reworked fragments, the missing elements of our personality.

L'auteur n'attend nullement un résumé ou un commentaire argumenté de son livre et il est même préférable que ceux-ci ne lui soient pas donnés, il attend seulement, en préservant la plus grande ambiguïté possible, qu'on lui dise avoir aimé ce qu'il a écrit.

As long as I don't write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything.

I only write books about dead people. They can't sue.

Bien écrire le médiocre94 » : cette formule en forme d'oxymore concentre et condense tout son programme esthétique.

Baudelaire, ici encore, se montre beaucoup plus radical que Flaubert ; notamment à propos de George Sand : bête, lourde, bavarde, « elle a dans les idées morales la même profondeur de jugement […] que les concierges et les filles entretenues » ; « théologienne du sentiment », elle

En réalité, comprendre la genèse sociale du champ littéraire, de la croyance qui le soutient, du jeu de langage qui s'y joue, des intérêts et des enjeux matériels ou symboliques qui s'y engendrent, ce n'est pas sacrifier au plaisir de réduire ou de détruire

Véritable défi à toutes les formes d'économisme, l'ordre littéraire (etc.) qui s'est progressivement institué au terme d'un long et lent processus d'autonomisation se présente comme un monde économique renversé : ceux qui y entrent ont intérêt au désintéressement ; comme la prophétie, et spécialement la prophétie de malheur, qui

champ de production culturelle est le lieu de luttes qui, à travers l'imposition de la définition dominante de l'écrivain, visent à délimiter la population de ceux qui sont en droit de participer à la lutte pour la définition de l'écrivain.

du monde commun, à peu près universellement partagé, à la différence des mondes spéciaux, microcosmes fondés, comme l'univers de la littérature ou de la science, sur une rupture avec le sens commun, avec l'adhésion doxique au monde ordinaire.

peut-être n'est-il pas excessif de voir dans le poème significativement intitulé « Héautontimoroumenos » [« celui qui se punit lui-même »]

On n'écrit pas ce qu'on veut, dit Flaubert. Et c'est vrai. Maxime [Du Camp] écrit ce qu'il veut, lui, ou à peu près. Mais ce n'est pas écrire110.

People would much rather argue their own visions and conceptions about a book than engage in a dialogue with the author, because the author could always trump you with, 'I wrote it.'

I enjoy receiving and giving realistic fiction, for both children and adults, with strong characters, beautiful language, and humane visions.

I used to take 'Visions of Cody' by Jack Kerouac on tour all the time. I don't really love Kerouac, but that book, you could just open at any page and find something incredible for that day.

A visit to a bookshop will be a difficult one if you're looking for any picture book in print that is more than 50 years old.

Socrates didn't care to visit the theater, as a rule, except when the plays of Euripides (which some think, he himself had helped to compose), were performed.

When we have a favorite writer, it's always the places where they grew up, lived, worked, and that they recreated on the page that we most want to visit and commune with. Faulkner's Mississippi, Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles, etc. The mind of the reader longs to be somewhere, not just anywhere, and certainly not nowhere.

My days are filled with writing, reading, and being a mom. Some days, I get to visit schools around the country and talk about what it's like to be a writer. I often feel like I'm pretending, because it's still hard for me to believe it when I see someone holding a book that I've written.

I often visit Maria Tatar's 'The Grimm Reader' for a cold dose of courage. Her translations come from the Brothers Grimm, whose now-famous collection of 'Kinder- und Hausmarchen' ('Children's and Household Tales') was first published in 1812. The book was not intended for young readers.

Visit any bookshop in Europe, and the shelves are filled with English novels and non-fiction books in translation - while British bookshops stock mainly English and American works.

I deal with the authors I work with, agents, and other departments of the company, talking about both the books that I'm working on and everyone else's. Then there's dealing with foreign publishers: foreigners visit all the time. People want to bounce things off the publisher, and a lot of it is encouragement.

My sister lived in England for a while when I was 12, and I came to visit her, and I spent most of the time in her flat reading.