Literature Quotes - Page 117

Read a lot. But read as a writer, to see how other writers are doing it. And make your knowledge of literature in English as deep and broad as you can. In workshops, writers are often told to read what is being written now, but if that is all you read, you are limiting yourself. You need to get a good overall sense of English literary history, so you can write out of that knowledge.

Our language and literature are without a doubt Britain's greatest contribution to the cultural heritage of the world.

I read recently that the problem with stereotypes isn't that they are inaccurate, but that they're incomplete. And this captures perfectly what I think about contemporary African literature. The problem isn't that it's inaccurate, it's that it's incomplete.

The critic's hankering to be law-giver rather than servant of literature is irrepressible.

A foreign country can best be understood through its literature.

Great literature is like moral leadership; everyone deplores the lack of it, but there is a tendency to prefer it from the safely dead.

Literature is an easier way to study acting, because then you can take any kind of spin.

Given that the label "immigrant literature" is already established, unavoidable for anyone with a migrant background and used in any given context, I strongly advocate an absurd amount of specification to go along with the label.

Never too late to learn a language. And the good literature to come with it.

You are not satisfied unless form is so strictly divorced from content that you can comprehend the one without almost without bothering to read the other.

A children's biography doesn't have to be comprehensive, and it doesn't have to be definitive. It does have to be accurate, to the extent that's possible. And most of all, it has to be a piece of literature, a compelling read. I want the reader to discover the joy of reading.

Keats, it must be remembered, was a sensualist. His poems ... reveal him as a man not altogether free from the vulgarities of sensualism, as well as one who was able to transmute it into perfect literature.

The difficulty is not to write, but to write what you mean.

I love literature, the English language and storytelling. I also have thirty horses and seventy foxhounds to feed.

I believe all literature started as gossip.

Theology is a non-subject. I'm not saying that professors of theology are non-professors. They do interesting things, like study biblical history, biblical literature. But theology, the study of gods, the study of what gods do, presupposes that gods exist. The only kind of theology that I take account of are those theological arguments that actually argue for the existence of God.

Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar’s dinner, from a hundred charities?

Literature is eavesdropping.

You look at the Koran or the Bible, they all tell the same stories. You see them as the stories of the Middle East. The stories reflect who these people were in the Middle East, and this is where Western culture came from. All our literature is basically influenced by these great myths. So I'm fascinated by it. You could almost say I'm obsessed with it. But if you're asking about the effect of religion on my life - almost everything I do is opposed to the practice of religion.

Literature got me into this mess and literature is going to have to get me out of it.

I don't wish to be a slave any longer to the stringent exigencies of literature.

Even those who identify themselves as libertarians follow an overtly anti-rationalist philosophy, as even a brief acquaintance with the work of Friedrich Hayek should make clear. The argument against reason in this literature is straightforward: it is impossible for any individual to acquire enough reliable information to make a rational decision, any actions founded on rational thought will therefore be delusional, any attempts at reason should therefore regarded as dangerous, and all action should instead be guided by tradition.

I believe that philosophy is part of literature, and not the reverse.

My religion is complicated. Literature is my true religion. After all, I come from a completely non-religious family.

I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.