Literature Quotes - Page 130

There is a point, and it is reached more easily than is supposed, where interference with freedom of the arts and literature becomes an attack on the life of society.

Any writer worth his salt knows that only a small proportion of literature does nore than partly compensate people for the damage they have suffered in learning to read.

If you liked a book, don't meet the author

You should love literature. You should live in the library. Forget about films.

I like poetry, but honestly, I like dramatic literature more. If I had to pick between Rumi and Dostoevsky, I would pick Dostoevsky without even thinking about it. Ninety-nine out of 100 Iranians would probably pick Rumi. Kiarostami, too, would probably pick Rumi first. I try to have the meaning be in the action of the story, not in the symbolism. I want it to be in the action, and it's dramatic action that creates the meaning.

Religious literature has eminent examples, and if we run over our private list of poets, critics, philanthropists and philosophers, we shall find them infected with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we ought to have tapped.

Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.

Society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class.

What is well done, I feel as if I did; what is ill-done, I reck not of.

I was an English-literature major, and that's all about stories and narratives.

The word generalization in literature usually means covering too much territory too thinly to be persuasive, let alone convincing. In science, however, a generalization means a principle that has been found to hold true in every special case.... The principle of leverage is a scientific generalization.

Amazon is evil, like anything big, but we can't help if it flows the very center of literature.

As a filmmaker coming from one of the youngest lands in the world, New Zealand - safe, green and democratic - I was intrigued by Afghanistan, with its literature and poetry, its old land and its deep history.

I believe we need literature, which, by allowing us to experience more fully, to imagine more fully, enables us to live more freely.

To rehearse imaginary conversations on paper is called literature. To do so out loud is called madness.

Literature isn't a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts.

Life and literature is a question of what one thrills to, and further than that no man shall ever go without putting his foot in a turd.

Most influential of all is the philosopher Stanley Cavell, and a younger generation of philosophers who have attempted to follow his pioneering work in thinking about literature philosophically.

The case I shall find evidence for is that when literature arrives, it expels science.

Literature is about as unnecessarily necessarily as tableware or ironed shirts.

I did study Shakespeare, that was sort of my thing; I got a Literature A-level, which is my only claim to academic fame.

Take a report. It's dry, the sentences are clunky and unfelicitous, they're just conveying information. But it seems to me that if you're fully engaged in a great piece of literature, once you enter the rhythms of the language, which is a kind of music, meanings are being conveyed that you're not fully aware of. They enter into your subconscious.

She had begun to read in the beginning as a protection from the frightening and unpleasant things. She continued because, apart from the story, literature brought with it a kind of gentility for which she craved.

I tweet when the tweet arrives. Never force a tweet or you will hurt your babymaker - and this is true of literature as well.

Freedom of speech doesn't guarantee great literature.