Literature Quotes - Page 11

• The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.

  Franz Kafka

  World

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

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• The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.

  Franz Kafka

  Men, Evil, Mediation

  Franz Kafka (1954). “Wedding preparations in the country: and other posthumous prose writings. With notes by Max Brod”

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• People cannot stand the saddest truth I know about the very nature of reading and writing imaginative literature, which is that poetry does not teach us how to talk to other people: it teaches us how to talk to ourselves. What I'm desperately trying to do is to get students to talk to themselves as though they are indeed themselves, and not someone else.

  Harold Bloom

  Reading, Writing, People

  "Falstaff for our times". www.theguardian.com. March 5, 1999.

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• I hate everything which is not in myself.

  Norman Mailer

  Hate, Ego, I Hate

  Norman Mailer (2013). “The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition, With a New Introduction by the Author”, p.164, Henry Holt and Company

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• When you deal with your brother, be pleasant, but get a witness.

  Hesiod

  Family, Brother, Witness

  Hesiod (1991). “My Brother's Killer”, p.63, University of Michigan Press

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• There is no more steely barb than that of the Infinite.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Infinity, Infinite, Barbs

  Charles Baudelaire (1951). “My heart laid bare, and other prose writings”

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• Much melancholy has devolved upon mankind, and it is detestable to me that might will triumph in the end...

  Karel Capek

  Triumph, Might, Melancholy

  "Karel Čapek: Life and Work". Book by Ivan Klima, 2002.

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• One never knows whether people have principles on principle or whether for their own personal satisfaction.

  Karel Capek

  People, Principles, Satisfaction

  "Letters from England". Book by Karel Capek, 1925.

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• Wherever on this planet ideals of personal freedom and dignity apply, there you will find the cultural inheritance of England.

  Karel Capek

  Inheritance, England, Dignity

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• One man finds in religion his literature and his science, another finds in it his joy and his duty.

  Joseph Joubert

  Men, Joy, Religion

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• I'm not rational enough to be a good journalist.

  Jim Harrison

  Enough, Rational, Journalist

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, themorningnews.org. June 7, 2004.

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• New Yorkers are mostly interested in New York - in case you haven't noticed.

  Jim Harrison

  New York, Cases, Havens

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, themorningnews.org. June 7, 2004.

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• I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.

  Jim Harrison

  Book, Poetry, Magazines

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• Literature usually begets literature.

  Susan Sontag

  Begets

  Susan Sontag (2013). “Against Interpretation and Other Essays”, p.72, Penguin UK

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• I don't know about you, but I can never get enough David Letterman.

  Barbara Walters

  Atheist, Equal Pay, Sin City

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• Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished, or if it does, as in the case of the tilled field, this product of human activity requires still more labor, incessant, tireless labor, to maintain its identity as a 'work' of man.

  Mary McCarthy

  Men, Identity, Doe

  Mary McCarthy (1961). “On the contrary”, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy

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• If you're a Conservative, why aren't you behind conserving the land?

  Ken Kesey

  Land, Conservative, Behinds

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• Exciting literature after supper is not the best digestive.

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Exciting, Supper

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1935). “The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography”, p.20, Univ of Wisconsin Press

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• Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In order to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature.

  Rita Dove

  Adversity, Order, Failing

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• You see Michelangelo and Picasso and you read literature. I had some innate inchoate yearning for that, but I never really saw where I would fit in. That's called art. And then something happened to pop music, which is that it became art under the hand of the Beatles, the Stones, and Bob Dylan and some other people.

  David Chase

  Art, Hands, People

  "David Chase's teenage dreams" by Lorraine Cwelich, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 20, 2012.

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• Literature ceases to be literature when it commits itself to moral uplift; it becomes moral philosophy or some such dull thing.

  Anthony Burgess

  Uplifting, Philosophy, Dull

  Anthony Burgess (2012). “The Kingdom of the Wicked”, p.4, Allison & Busby

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• With both agents and publishers hungry for bestsellers, literature will have to end up as a cottage industry.

  Anthony Burgess

  Cottages, Agents, Hungry

  Anthony Burgess (1990). “You've had your time: being the second part of the confessions of Anthony Burgess”, Heinemann Educational Books

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• America was and is the immigrant's dream.

  Don DeLillo

  Dream, America, Immigrants

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.88, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there.

  Don DeLillo

  Waiting, Ends, Sentences

  Don DeLillo (2016). “Mao II”, p.34, Pan Macmillan

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• I think there is a sense of last things in my work that probably comes from a Catholic childhood.

  Don DeLillo

  Thinking, Childhood, Catholic

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.81, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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