Literature Quotes - Page 16

• 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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• I've never felt influenced by Ernest Hemingway though I suppose there is something inevitable there.

  Jim Harrison

  Inevitable, Felt

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• I should add that I very much enjoy certain cities especially Paris, New York and Chicago.

  Jim Harrison

  New York, Cities, Paris

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• I write novellas because I don't like loose sprawling prose.

  Jim Harrison

  Writing, Prose

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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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• We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.

  Elizabeth Drew

  Pain, Loss, Frustration

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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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• 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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• I've always liked being relatively obscure. I feel that's where I belong, that's where my work belongs.

  Don DeLillo

  Obscure, Feels

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.77, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• One truth is the swing of the sentence, the beat and poise, but down deeper it's the integrity of the writer as he matches with the language.

  Don DeLillo

  Integrity, Swings, Language

  Don DeLillo (1992). “Mao II: A Novel”, p.48, Penguin

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• I am a literary animal. For me, everything ends in literature.

  Carlos Fuentes

  Animal, Ends

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• I just finished writing an essay about William Maxwell, an American writer whose work I admire very much.

  Donna Tartt

  Writing, Admire, Maxwell

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• Literature begins with the possible model of experience, and what it produces is the literary model we call the classic.

  Northrop Frye

  Classic, Produce, Models

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.442, University of Toronto Press

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• The simple point is that literature belongs to the world man constructs, not to the world he sees; to his home, not his environment.

  Northrop Frye

  Home, Simple, Men

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.443, University of Toronto Press

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• For the serious mediocre writer convention makes him sound like a lot of other people; for the popular writer it gives him a formula he can exploit; for the serious good writer it releases his experiences or emotions from himself and incorporates them into literature, where they belong.

  Northrop Frye

  Writing, People, Giving

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.451, University of Toronto Press

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• The message of guidance that neither politics nor philosophy nor religion now seems able to provide, we look for in modern literature.

  Irving Howe

  Philosophy, Looks, Able

  Irving Howe (1980). “Celebrations and attacks: thirty years of literary and cultural commentary”, Harcourt

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• No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.

  Anthony Trollope

  Men, Thinking, Vanity

  'The Bertrams' (1859) ch. 27

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

  Anthony Trollope

  Screws, Peg

  Anthony Trollope (2015). “The Palliser Novels: Complete Parliamentary Chronicles (All Six Novels in One Volume): Can You Forgive Her? + Phineas Finn + The Eustace Diamonds + Phineas Redux + The Prime Minister + The Duke’s Children”, p.739, e-artnow

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• They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind.

  Anthony Trollope

  Men, Mind, May

  1869 Of Trevelyan's paranoia about his wife's fidelity. He Knew He Was Right, ch.38.

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