Literature Quotes - Page 22

The old fun thing is when somebody typed up the first chapter of War and Peace. And then made a precis of the rest of it and sent it out and only one publisher recognized it.

Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation.

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.

All art is the struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.

The prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.

One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

Many a thief is a better man than many a clergyman, and miles nearer to the gate of the kingdom.

I thoroughly believe that reading and literature can help a society to better understand itself.

Do not allow to slip away from you freedoms the people who came before you won with such hard knocks.

How beautiful maleness is, if it finds its right expression.

Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.

Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.

The world of literature is a world where there is no reality except that of the human imagination.

It's the most righteous, which of course is not the same thing as the most profitable.

The U.N. Population Fund has a maternal health program in some Cameroon hospitals, but it doesn't operate in this region. It's difficult to expand, because President Bush has cut funding

Be not entangled in this world of days and nights; Thou hast another time and space as well.

Most sermons sound to me like commercials - but I can't make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product.

Even the most fickle are faithful to a few bad habits.

Critic's delight: scolding the Mighty Dead.

I love you is the inscription on Pandora's box.

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

No one wants to know how clever you are. They don't want an insight into your mind, thrilling as it might be. They want an insight into their own.

Be able to sneeze without sounding ridiculous. That means neither stifling yourself or spraying your immediate vicinity.

Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.