Literature Quotes - Page 84

Way before Watergate, senior administration officials hid behind anonymity.

Even now there is no evidence that anyone involved in the Nixon operation was going to threaten us.

Originality in literature is only a new coat of paint on an old house.

We're supposed to see "universal" love as heterosexual. What I insist upon in my work is that there is no such thing as universal love in literature.

Without charm there can be no fine literature, as there can be no perfect flower without fragrance.

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.

When an actor has money he doesn't send letters, he sends telegrams.

There are people whom even children's literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon.

Neither money nor position can atone to me for low birth.

Cham is the only thing to screw one up when one is down a peg.

I have no ambition to surprise my reader. Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely muse.

It has become a certainty now that if you will only advertise sufficiently you may make a fortune by selling anything.

Poverty, to be picturesque, should be rural. Suburban misery is as hideous as it is pitiable.

Well the wedding in the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury was a fairy tale and there was a huge public impress, investment of goodwill, affection and indeed money in this Institution. It was a huge success at the time.

My family can always tell when I'm well into a novel because the meals get very crummy.

Evil is always possible. Goodness is a difficulty.

There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat.

I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am.

The notion of a universality of human experience is a confidence trick and the notion of a universality of female experience is a clever confidence trick.

My favorite literature to read is fairly dry history. I like the framework, and my imagination can do the rest.

I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

The duty of literature is to note what counts, and to light up what is suited to the light. If it ceases to choose and to love, it becomes like a woman who gives herself without preference.

Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.

Duty - that which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.

Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.