The man is in his work,read it if you want to know about him.

Maybe at the very bottom of it… I really don’t like God. You know, it’s silly to say I don’t like God because I don’t believe in God, but in the same sense that I...

Pay attention, and use your imagination.

There used to be a rubbish heap under the great tree in Dhoby Ghaut with a sarabat stall parked next to it. It was a low, sprawling rubbish heap made up of the usual things—refuse...

In The End The Words Are The All And The Nothing.

In employing the long sentence the inexperienced writer should not strain after the heavy, ponderous type. Johnson and Carlyle used such a type, but remember, an ordinary mortal cannot wield the sledge hammer of a...

Literature always anticipates life. It doesn’t copy it but moulds it to it’s purpose.

What is hell to a writer? Hell is being too busy to find the time to write or being unable to find the inspiration. Hell is suddenly finding the words but being away from your...

To keep the air fresh among words is the secret of verbal cleanliness.

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful...

Possible impossibility emerges From an impossible possibility, Or possibly, impossible possibility Blooms from the impossibly possible impossibility.

yo soy mi propio ángel y mi único demonio.

They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction.’Poor Grendel’s had an accident,’ I whisper. ‘So may you all.

Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of...

All writers are waiting for replies. That’s what I’ve learned. Maybe all human beings are

{…} It is hieroglyphic that will last, not stone heads. The future belongs to the word, not the image.(The mason Mutsose, in Achet-Aten).

En France, que de gens à longues oreilles : nes en littérature, lièvres en politique !

Lord Jim.” I have friends who’ve found themselves described in everything from science fiction to detective novels. This self-recognition through others is not simply a by-product of art — it’s the whole point.

The moon had been lighted and was hung in a treetop.

When I first stepped into literature twenty-five years ago, I wanted to work on behalf of the oppressed, the working masses, and it seemed to me, mistakenly, that I would not find them among the...

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very...

The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. If this...

Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists.

The pale organisms of literary heroes feeding under the author’s supervision swell gradually with the reader’s lifeblood; so that the genius of a writer consists in giving them the faculty to adapt themselves to that...

This old, folkish layer survives in us all, and to speak as I really think, I do not consider religion the most adequate means of keeping it under lock and key. For that, literature alone...

In my teens, I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more, so I thought I should be some sort of a...

It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children, good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world, and...

No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them...

There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.

We read in slow, long motions, as if drifting in space, weightless. We read full of prejudice, malignantly. We read generously, making excuses for the text, filling gaps, mending faults. And sometimes, when the stars...

I finally returned to Iran in 1979, when I got my degree in English and American literature, and stayed for 18 years in the Islamic republic.

Gençken tecrüben yoktur, yaşlıyken de gücün.

Yirmi beş yaşındayken insanlar üzerine ne bilebiliriz ki?

Sir, I shall not defeat you – I shall transcend you.

I stress the expansion and elaboration of language. In simplifying it, reducing it, we reduce the power of our expression and our power to communicate. Standardization, the use of worn-out formulas, impedes communication because it...

Books and movies, they are not mere entertainment. They sustain me and help me cope with my real life.

Even if you are alone you wage war with yourself.

Hope without love is hopeless.

History will be erased in the universal purgatory.

What you gain here, you lose on the other side.

You are hurrying to the sweet place, To the nonsense chasing your spirit And in the nonsense you look for answers.

It is futile to spend time telling stories about the fleetness of each day.

I fly through memory to find a newborn love.

Forget decorated generals, tell me about Private Ryan.

Either all lights are turned off or one inner light is missing.

Deceit dispels the boredom of the Absolute.

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.

Let us depart instead for the fields of Dreams and wander those blue, romantic hills where stands the abandoned tower of the Supernatural, where cool mosses clothe the ruins of Idealism. Let us, in short,...

I speak this way because I know how perilous speech can be…. A saber might be stopped by a shield. A bullet might be dodged by a stroke of luck. But you can’t dodge a...

Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.