Literature Quotes

"There are works of literature whose influence is strong but indirect because it is mediated through the whole of the culture rather than immediately through imitation. Wordsworth is the case that comes to mind"

J. M. Coetzee, Author

"My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration. The second is reading literature on the subject. The third is reflection"

Ryszard Kapuscinski, Journalist

"In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation, a sage, someone with no institutional affiliations who could offer an authoritative word on our times as well as on our moral life"

J. M. Coetzee, Author

"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"

Shawn Johnson, Athlete

"I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist"

Harold Bloom, Critic

"As I grew up, I was interested in other areas, too, especially literature. It became a major love of mine. Later, it became a difficult choice for me as to whether to major in music or literature. It wasn't until my 30s that I began a profession in music"

Tom Glazer, Musician

"Literature is an avenue to glory, ever open for those ingenious men who are deprived of honours or of wealth"

Isaac Disraeli, Writer

"For me, literature is a complex game, both mental and concrete, which is acted out in a physical manner on the page"

Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Novelist

"What we value about music and literature are the moments that they create in our minds when we encounter them"

Stephan Jenkins, Musician

"The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work"

Augusten Burroughs, Writer

"American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter"

Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Novelist

"If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely"

Don DeLillo, Novelist

"The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write"

Annie Dillard, Author

"The study of social progress is today not less needed in literature than is the analysis of the human heart"

Alfred de Vigny, Poet

"Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature"

T. S. Eliot, Poet

"We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion"

T. S. Eliot, Poet

"Wisdom finds its literary expression in wisdom literature"

Paul Ricoeur, Philosopher

"If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside"

Evelyn Waugh, Author

"I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics"

T. S. Eliot, Poet

"The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self"

Charles Horton Cooley, Sociologist

"Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal"

Francoise Sagan, Playwright

"There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature"

Lawrence Durrell, Writer

"In Algeria, I had begun to get into literature and philosophy. I dreamed of writing-and already models were instructing the dream, a certain language governed it"

Jacques Derrida, Philosopher

"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"

Richard Dawkins, Scientist

"Postmodernism cost literature its audience"

Scott Turow, Novelist

"Just why I sent it to the publishers would be hard to say, but when I had finished it I felt that it was literature, because it is real and because it was well written. And I know that the world wants such things"

Mary MacLane, Writer

"In pure literature, the writers of the eighteenth century achieved, indeed, many triumphs; but their great, their peculiar, triumphs were in the domain of thought"

Lytton Strachey, Critic

"It was a combination of an intense interest in children's literature, which I've always had, and the feeling that I'd just have a go and see if I could do it"

Penelope Lively, Author

"Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early"

Rita Dove, Poet

"There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause"

Mao Zedong, Leader

"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"

Lytton Strachey, Critic

"Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made"

Gore Vidal, Novelist

"I think Henry Miller has had huge influence not because he wrote about sex, but because the memoir or the nonfiction novel has become such a monumental force in American publishing, if not in literature"

Leslie Fiedler, Critic

"American literature has never been content to be just one among the many literatures of the Western World. It has always aspired to be the literature not only of a new continent but of a New World"

Christopher Dawson, Writer

"It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave"

Anatole Broyard, Critic

"There are three things men can do with women: love them, suffer for them, or turn them into literature"

Stephen Stills, Musician

"Violence commands both literature and life, and violence is always crude and distorted"

Ellen Glasgow, Novelist

"Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In order to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature"

Rita Dove, Poet

"For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about it. I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art"

Rita Dove, Poet

"I am one of the writers who wish to create serious works of literature which dissociate themselves from those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large"

Kenzaburo Oe, Writer

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