Literature Quotes - Page 58

Money: power at its most liquid.

Rage is exciting, but leaves me confused and exhausted.

If I play hard to get, soon the phone stops ringing altogether.

A blunt statement can be as false as any other.

It is possible to interpret without observing, but not to observe without interpreting.

Cynicism is full of naive disappointments.

If the world would apologize, I might consider a reconciliation.

Innocence is thought charming because it offers delightful possibilities for exploitation.

How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?

that sunlight of the dead which is called literature.

All right, then, I'll go to hell.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.

Be able to live alone, even if you don't want to and think you will never find it necessary.

Be able to meet any deadline, even if your work is done less well than it would be if you had all the time you would have preferred.

Make a habit of canceling every subscription to anything you don't have time to read

Don't ever, ever, believe anyone who tells you that you can just get by, by doing the easiest thing possible. Because there's always somebody behind you who really wants to do what you're doing. And they're going to work harder than you if you're not working hard.

Modern American cinema seems to me superficial. The intention is to understand a certain reality, and the result is nothing but a photographing of that reality.

The essayist has to follow a certain intellectual pattern. The novelist has the advantage of using fantasy, of being subjective.

Life without literature is a life reduced to penury. It expands you in every way. It illuminates what you’re doing. It shows you possibilities you haven’t thought of. It enables you to live the lives of other people than yourself. It broadens you, it makes you more human. It makes life enjoyable.

Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by religion.

One of my rules is never explain. A writer is a lot like a magician, if you explain how the trick works then a lot of the magic turns mundane.

It is no exaggeration to say that the English Bible is, next to Shakespeare, the greatest work in English literature, and that it will have much more influence than even Shakespeare upon the written and spoken language of the English race.

There was very little suicide among the men of the North, because every man considered it his duty to get killed, not to kill himself; and to kill himself would have seemed cowardly, as implying fear of being killed by others

To whom it may concern: It is springtime. It is late afternoon.

If capital and labor ever do get together it's good night for the rest of us.