Literature Quotes - Page 28

• The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them.

  Harold Pinter

  World, Systematic, Crime

  Harold Pinter (2009). “Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics, 1948-2008”

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• I ought not to speak about the dead because the dead are all over the place.

  Harold Pinter

  Speak, Ought

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• One is and is not in the centre of the maelstrom of it all.

  Harold Pinter

  Maelstrom, Centre

  Interview with Ramona Koval, www.abc.net.au. December 22, 2002.

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• I went to a British Council event a while back and there were lots of German professors of literature. About half of them were convinced I had a German sense of humour and the other half were sure it was British. They are probably still arguing about it now.

  Tibor Fischer

  Events, Half, Arguing

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• I think that great poetry is the most interesting and complex use of the poet's language at that point in history, and so it's even more exciting when you read a poet like Yeats, almost 100 years old now, and you think that perhaps no one can really top that.

  Diane Wakoski

  Thinking, Years, Interesting

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• I'm passing on a tradition of which I am part. There's a long line of poets who went before me, and I'm another one, and I'm hoping to pass that on to other younger, or newer, poets than myself.

  Diane Wakoski

  Passing On, Long, Lines

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• Other people have noticed more of an evolution than I have and so I'll try to tell you where I'm coming from and also relate it to what I think other people perceive.

  Diane Wakoski

  Thinking, People, Trying

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• One, I have a wonderful publisher, Black Sparrow Press; as long as they exist, they will keep me in print. And they claim they sell very respectable numbers of my books, so I guess, and it's true, every place I go, my books are in libraries and on bookshelves.

  Diane Wakoski

  Book, Numbers, Long

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• Political people don't solve stuff - not really. Political people are like guys in pop music.

  Bruce Sterling

  People, Guy, Political

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• A security cam is one small part of a much larger universe of cams. The much larger effect, socially, politically and economically, is going to come from a much larger trend.

  Bruce Sterling

  Trends, Small Parts, Effects

  "Big Brother and the Next 50 years". Interview with Declan McCullagh, www.cnet.com. June 05, 2003.

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• Privacy under what circumstance? Privacy at home under what circumstances? You have more privacy if everyone's illiterate, but you wouldn't really call that privacy. That's ignorance.

  Bruce Sterling

  Home, Ignorance, Privacy

  "Big Brother and the Next 50 years". Interview with Declan McCullagh, www.cnet.com. June 05, 2003.

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• I was sitting in the looping studio late one night, and I had this epiphany that they weren't paying me for my acting, for God's sake, but to own me. And from then on, it became clear and an awful lot easier to deal with.

  Lucy Lawless

  Night, Acting, Sitting

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• I think that Oprah's on a mission to improve the lives of the average American in various ways. And one of them is to bring literature to people who would normally not be quite as demanding in their reading tastes, to show them writing that can be more than just entertainment.

  Janet Fitch

  Reading, Writing, Thinking

  Janet Fitch (2013). “White Oleander”, p.274, Hachette UK

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• I thought The Shining was just absolutely wonderful. Stephen King reaches all kinds of people. In the beginning he was just dismissed out of hand, which was terrible.

  Anne Rice

  Kings, Hands, People

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• We have to become saints. We have to become like Christ. Anything less is simply not enough.

  Anne Rice

  Saint, Christ, Enough

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• I'm fascinated by almost any mythology that I can get my hands on...

  Anne Rice

  Hands, Mythology, Fascinated

  Penguin Random House Interview, www.randomhouse.com.

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• Most students of literature can pick apart a metaphor or spot an ethnic stereotype, but not many of them can say things like: 'The poem's sardonic tone is curiously at odds with its plodding syntax.

  Terry Eagleton

  Odds, Syntax, Tone

  "A puritan at play" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. March 15, 2008.

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• The study of history and philosophy, accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for lawyers and engineers as well as for those who study in arts faculties.

  Terry Eagleton

  Art, Philosophy, Study

  "The death of universities" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. December 17, 2010.

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• Literature... is condemned (or privileged) to be forever the most rigorous and, consequently, the most reliable of terms in which man names and transforms himself.

  Paul de Man

  Book, Men, Names

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• Just as the office worker dreams of murdering his hated boss and so is saved from really murdering him, so it is with the author; with his great dreams he helps his readers to survive, to avoid their worst intentions. And society, without realizing it respects and even exalts him, albeit with a kind of jealousy, fear and even repulsion, since few people want to discover the horrors that lurk in the depths of their souls. This is the highest mission of great literature, and there is no other.

  Ernesto Sabato

  Dream, Book, Office

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• Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Philosophy, Aphorism, Form

  "Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms (A in Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798) #259)". Book by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, 1968.

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• Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across, a critique of philosophy would be nothing less than a just reprisal.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Philosophy, Would Be, Criticize

  "Athenaeum Fragments" by Friedrich Schlegel, #56 (B&S), 1798.

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• If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Mind, Looks, Want

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• Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Always Trying, World, Endless

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• You cannot be responsible for salvation until first you've been responsible for sin.

  Edwin Louis Cole

  Firsts, Sin, Responsible

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