Literature Quotes

"The knowledge of languages was very useful. I have a university degree in foreign languages and literature"

"Literature that keeps employing new linguistic and formal modes of expression to draft a panorama of society as a whole while at the same time exposing it, tearing the masks from its face - for me that would be deserving of an award"

Elfriede Jelinek, Playwright

"Only the more rugged mortals should attempt to keep up with current literature"

George Ade, Playwright

"The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine"

Stephen Leacock, Economist

"In my teens, I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more, so I thought I should be some sort of a scholar"

Trevor Nunn, Director

"I learned a lot from Elvis. He taught me about music, art, literature, and culture"

Priscilla Presley, Actress

"I think art is the ultimate transformative tool. You can change somebody's mind or change somebody's life with one song, one painting, or one piece of literature"

Sheryl Crow, Musician

"Well, the oil, the oil spot, if you will, is a, is a term in counterinsurgency literature that connotes a peaceful area, secure area. So what you're trying to do is to always extend that, to push that out"

David Petraeus, Soldier

"Pop changes week to week, month to month. But great music is like literature"

Ravi Shankar, Musician

"To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength"

Lawrence Clark Powell

"I lived in a region in the northwestern province - the people there in general have a great love for the Taliban, so I started to read some of the literature of the scholars and the history of the movement. And my heart became attached to them"

John Walker Lindh, Criminal

"The two World Wars came in part, like much modern literature and art, because men, whose nature is to tire of everything in turn... tired of common sense and civilization"

F. L. Lucas, Critic

"I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature"

Anne Stevenson, Poet

"Literature has to serve as a moral control of politics"

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Poet

"I just happen to like the work. I like preparing for a role. I like reading. I like analyzing. I like literature. I like emotions. I like working with other actors"

Elle Macpherson, Model

"I wanted the press to become something of a movement. Not a movement committed to a particular "ism," but a gathering together of writers with an aesthetic approach to literature and with a lust for excellence"

John Metcalf, Editor

"All literature is political"

LeVar Burton, Actor

"Music enriches people's lives in the same way paintings and literature do. Everybody deserves that"

Victoria Wood, Comedian

"During our stay in London for the first time I was able to establish personal contact with some of the organic chemists, whose work I knew and admired from the literature. I found them most gracious and helpful"

George Andrew Olah, Scientist

"It seems to me that an author who has determined very new domains in literature is Gertrude Stein"

Raymond Queneau, Poet

"I've been missing Japanese literature so much of late"

Utada Hikaru, Musician

"What I am going to write is the last of what I have to say. I will say that literature is the only consciousness we possess and that its role as consciousness must inform us of our ability to comprehend the hideous danger of nuclear power"

John Cheever, Writer

"It's different in Scotland. People who come to readings are more interested in literature as such, but the readership in general is really quite diverse. It's a cliche, but it's said that people who read my books don't read any other books, and you do get that element"

Irvine Welsh, Novelist

"When you kill somebody in the movies, it matters, whereas in literature it can be allegorical"

Barbet Schroeder, Director

"The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it"

Vaclav Havel, Leader

"But picketing - picketing for or against something, and handing out literature - these are conspicuously formal actions. They have to be understood as indirect communication"

Tony Conrad, Artist

"The idea of bringing young people up to Literature is doubtless calculated to raise the eyebrows almost as much as the suggestion of bringing them up to the Stage"

James Payn, Novelist

"Cultivating literature as I do upon a little oatmeal, and driving, when in a position to be driven at all, in that humble vehicle, the 'bus, I have had, perhaps, exceptional opportunities for observing their mutual position and behaviour; and it is very peculiar"

James Payn, Novelist

"SF is the literature of the theoretically possible, and F is the literature of the impossible"

Piers Anthony, Writer

"I think the great artists, especially in literature, have always thought with the heart"

Douglas Sirk, Director

"There is a broad cultural current that conveys the idea that a film is like a football team, it represents a nation, it is illustrated literature, filmed radio. These are outdated concepts, totally out of touch with today's realities"

Jean-Jacques Annaud, Director

"During half a century of literary work, I have endeavoured to introduce the philosophy of evolution into the sphere of literature, and to inspire my readers to think in evolutionary terms"

Johannes Vilhelm Jensen, Author

"In the history of literature there are many great enduring works which were not published in the lifetimes of the authors. If the authors had not achieved self-affirmation while writing, how could they have continued to write?"

Gao Xingjian, Novelist

"I had all the normal interests - I played basketball and I headed the school paper. But I also developed very early a great love for music and literature and the theater"

Carlisle Floyd, Composer

"I do not believe in sex distinction in literature, law, politics, or trade - or that modesty and virtue are more becoming to women than to men, but wish we had more of it everywhere"

Belva Lockwood, Lawyer

"Literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity"

Nelson Algren, Novelist

"Like most kids growing up, I had a very wide interest. I was interested in everything. I tried to take advantage of everything, from the sciences to music to writing to literature"

Michael P. Anderson, Astronaut

"Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo clinic"

Roy Blount, Jr., Writer

"Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds"

Nathalie Sarraute, Lawyer

"The genre has moved into this commercial aspect of itself, and ignored this extraordinarily rich literature that's filed everywhere else except under travel"

Robyn Davidson, Writer

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