Literature Quotes - Page 40

• This used to be about sex. The literature of my people was pornography, filled with cries for mercy, drama enacted on people without prolonged negotiation, partners engaged in a dance in the middle of a bonfire. Now, it's 300-page manuals about how to make sure nothing bad will happen.

  Laura Antoniou

  Sex, Drama, People

  "Unsafe at Any Speed or: Safe, Sane and Consensual, My Fanny". Pucker Up (puckerup.com), Issue 1, p. 12, Winter 1995.

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• [Vathek] has, in parts, been called, but to some judgments, never is, dull: it is certainly in parts, grotesque, extravagant and even nasty. But Beckford could plead sufficient "local colour" for it, and a contrast, again almost Shakespearean, between the flickering farce atrocities of the beginning and the sombre magnificence of the end. Beckford's claims, in fact, rest on the half-score or even half-dozen pages towards the end: but these pages are hard to parallel in the later literature of prose fiction.

  William Thomas Beckford

  Fiction, Half, Dozen

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• Our point isn't to make an examination of popular film but to illustrate that the yearning for a heroic adventure lies just beneath the surface of our consciousness; film, television, literature, sports, and travel are in a sense vicarious adventures.

  Alan Hirsch

  Sports, Lying, Adventure

  Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch (2011). “The Faith of Leap (Shapevine): Embracing a Theology of Risk, Adventure & Courage”, p.110, Baker Books

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• The history of the Bible text is a romance of literature, though it is a romance of which the consequences are of vital import; and thanks to the succession of discoveries which have been made of late years, we know more about it than of the history of any other ancient book in the world.

  Frederic G. Kenyon

  Book, Discovery, Years

  "The Story Of The Bible" by Frederic G. Kenyon. Ch. I, The Bible And Recent Discoveries, p. 4, 1949.

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• The Gospels were not thought of as works of literature. People were not concerned with the literary reputation of Matthew or Mark, but with the substance of their records of our Lord's life. They did not have to respect their actual words, as they would if they were transcribing the works of Thucydides or Plato.

  Frederic G. Kenyon

  Plato, People, Substance

  "The Story Of The Bible" by Frederic G. Kenyon. Ch. X, The Position Today, p. 135, 1949.

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• The history of literature is the history of the human mind. It is, as compared with other histories, the intellectual as distinguished from the material, the informing spirit as compared with the outward and visible.

  William H. Prescott

  Intellectual, Mind, Spirit

  WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT (1858). “BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL MISCELLANIES”, p.245

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• Science fiction is hard to define because it is the literature of change and it changes while you are trying to define it.

  Tom Shippey

  Trying, Fiction, Hard

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• The last paragraph in which you tell what the story is about is almost always best left out.

  Irwin Shaw

  Stories, Lasts, Paragraph

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• In high school I was drawn to the study of literature, poetry Shakespeare, contemporary fiction, drama, you name it - I read it.

  Frederick Lenz

  Drama, School, Contemporary Fiction

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• In reading, in literature and poetry, I found an artistic freedom that I didn't see at Woolworth's. I would read everything from Shakespeare to science fiction ... sometimes a book a day.

  Frederick Lenz

  Book, Reading, Fiction

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• The diversion of baiting an author has the sanction of all ages and nations, and is more lawful than the sport of teasing other animals, because, for the most part, he comes voluntarily to the stake, furnished, as he imagines, by the patron powers of literature, with resistless weapons, and impenetrable armour, with the mail of the boar of Erymanth, and the paws of the lion of Nemea.

  Samuel Johnson

  Sports, Writing, Animal

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1840). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.267

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• Truth, like beauty, varies its fashions, and is best recommended by different dresses to different minds; and he that recalls the attention of mankind to any part of learning which time has left behind it, may be truly said to advance the literatures of his own age. As the manners of nations vary, new topicks of persuasion become necessary, and new combinations of imagery are produced; and he that can accommodate himself to the reigning taste, may always have readers who perhaps would not have looked upon better performances.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fashion, Writing, Mind

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”

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• The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word 'renowned'... I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative... Why did I keep reading? Because London Heathrow is a long way from San Francisco International.

  Geoffrey K. Pullum

  Book, Reading, Thinking

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• The poor Geordies are in the process of being rebuffed by every sentient human being whose ambition in life is more than simply to pocket six million quid for having been a failure and run for the hills. They want beautiful, flowing football and tangible success, at St James' Park. Fine. I, meanwhile, want Jessica Alba and the Nobel prize for literature. I make my prospects slightly more realistic.

  Rod Liddle

  Beautiful, Soccer, Football

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• People whose understanding and taste in literature, painting, and music are beyond question are, for the most part, ignorant of what is good or bad art in the theater.

  Minnie Maddern Fiske

  Art, People, Understanding

  Minnie Maddern Fiske, Alexander Woollcott (1917). “Mrs. Fiske: Her Views on Actors, Acting, and the Problems of Production”

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• Mourn for me rather as living than as dead.

  Aeschylus

  Mourn

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• Among other things they picked out a detail that Charles had been offered the Governorship of Hong Kong in its dying days by Thatcher in return for shutting up about the inner cities. He quite rightly in my view led the paper on this story.

  Anthony Holden

  Views, Cities, Dying

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• As somebody who's been writing about this subject for getting on twenty years now, it's astonishing how the climate has changed in the last five years.

  Anthony Holden

  Writing, Years, Lasts

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• I first got to know Charles in the late seventies when I wrote an article and then a book about him and I think at the time he came across as quite appealing, it was probably the height of his popularity.

  Anthony Holden

  Book, Thinking, Height

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• I remember a moment when the Prince went back to his old school, Grammar School in Melbourne, and slightly to his horror his old music teacher produced a cello.

  Anthony Holden

  Teacher, School, Remember

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• It was delightful but, of course, it was pretty insulting to my professional reputation.

  Anthony Holden

  Insulting, Reputation, Courses

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• Thatcher came under pressure from right wing backbenchers to shut up the Prince of Wales and there was a deal done between them where he did actually shut up in the end.

  Anthony Holden

  Wings, Pressure, Done

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• Well I'm a very similar age to Prince Charles. I'm a year older than him. I was at university at the same time as him. I think in the sixties, like all the Royals, he really had very little impact on my life at all and he seemed, if anything a lot older in his attitudes.

  Anthony Holden

  Attitude, Thinking, Years

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• What was funny if you were there is that we were all immensely sophisticated people who knew exactly what she was going to say and we're chatting away, nice to see you.

  Anthony Holden

  Nice, People, Sophisticated

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• I am very, very happy for Alice Walker.

  Audre Lorde

  Very Happy, Walkers

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