Literature Quotes - Page 160

When I write something, every word of it is meant. I can't say it enough.

I do want to go another way - to write something completely different.

I can't get very far away from Christianity, I can't get very far away from the angels and the saints. I work them in always, in some way.

I broke with my religion in college.

We have to become saints. We have to become like Christ. Anything less is simply not enough.

For me, literature is a way of enlarging myself by learning about people who are not like me.

One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights [...] a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer.

I once wanted to be a personage. Now I am comfortable being a person.

They've hit us and we've got to hit back hard, and I'm not just talking about the terrorists.

I'm not going to be lectured to.

It is, perhaps, a better thing to be valued only as an object of passion than never to be valued at all.

We're making far too big a deal out of our sexual preferences. It's just another form of narcissism, and I think it can be a big problem and a tremendous obstacle.

We have to be willing to give up all the injustices of the past that did exist - and that do exist right now. When we become interested in liberation, we then become interested in that which transcends time.

We have been very conditioned by the cultures that we come from and are usually very identified with the particular gender that we happen to be a member of.

In my experience, men are not necessarily less sensitive or compassionate than women are, and women are not necessarily any less aggressive or competitive than men are - as a matter of fact, often they are more so!

God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.

It is with fine sentiments that bad literature is made. Descend to the bottom of the well if you wish to see the stars.

If someone knows me and likes me or my work, they're more likely to allow me to tell their story. But it also cuts the other way.

The thing I love about reporting is being able to blend in with any group, whether that's neo-Nazis or pedophiles.

Poetry is the most concentrated form of literature; it is the most emotionalized and powerful way in which thought can be presented.

I know that a translation of a work of literature is like playing a violin concerto on the piano. You can do this. You can do this very successfully on one strict condition: never try to force the piano to produce the sounds of the violin. This will be grotesque.

I prefer to talk about the gift of literature rather than its role or task.

I'm not sure I'm happy with words such as "task" or "role" when they are attached to literature. I prefer to talk about the gift of literature rather than its role or task. You know, gynecology has a role; sex is a gift. And literature is not about sending messages.

Literature is not made of ideas and it's not made of concepts, of psychological analysis. It's made of words.

In the same way in which music is made of notes and a painting is made of lines of colors, the matter of literature are words.