Reality is not an inspiration for literature. At its best, literature is an inspiration for reality.

…the pleasures of literary fiction are the pleasures of orientation; the pleasures of literature are the pleasures of bewilderment.

To maintain your honesty , one must know to keep alive the spirit of chidhood

I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of print, the way you crawl through a fence, and go to sleep under that beautiful big green fig-tree.

A good book, he had concluded, leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul. Such books were for him rare and, as he aged, rarer. Still...

It often is better to ask an ancient Hebrew goatherd, instead of a so-called expert like myself, about the meaning of a particular, biblical story.

When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives his benediction to this behavior by his attitude towards the result of the behavior arranged by himself,...

But perhaps the greatest escapism of all is to take refuge in the domesticity of the past, the home that history and literature become, avoiding the one moment of time in which we are not...

That’s why literature is so fascinating. It’s always up for interpretation, and could be a hundred different things to a hundred different people. It’s never the same thing twice.

Oh! And they read English novels! David! Did you ever look into an English novel? Well, do not trouble yourself. It is nothing but a lot of nonsense about girls with fanciful names getting married.

Martial (the main character of LOCUS SOLUS) has a very interesting conception of literary beauty: the work must contain nothing real, no observations about the world or the mind, nothing but completely imaginary constructions. These...

The books—the generous friends who met me without suspicion—the merciful masters who never used me ill! The only years of my life that I can look back on with something like pride… Early and late,...

[Y]ou, one day, will knock lips with Turkish-coffee-clad veils whose beds our kin must tuck in misty-eyed.

The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.

At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You...

The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in ones own home.” Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The...

Her köyde onu ayakta tutan bir doğru vardır.

Bu büyük orucu niçin gereksiyoruz? Niye? Oruç, hem de büyük. Ama buna ne ihtiyacımız var? Demka bir türlü anlamıyordu; çünkü o, yaşantısının büyük bölümünü aç karınla geçirmişti.

Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuéesQui hante la tempête et se rit de l’archer;Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher.

La buena literatura es un arte que alimenta el alma.

Literature should stand by itself, of itself, and for itself.

To risk life to save a smile on a face of a woman or a child is the secret of chivalry.

God is busy and has no time for you.

Beauty is a cheap word, but beauty remains priceless.

My mathematics is simple: one plus one = one.

To the knights of faith nobody believes.

The eyesight for an eagle is what thought is to a man.

Nothing reminds us of an awakening more than rain.

They will smile, as they always do when they plan a major attack late in the night.

Strangers are endearing because you don’t know them yet.

Do not look too far for you will see nothing.

The universe is God’s son.

Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.

There comes a hush between darkness and day.Like expectation of a caress.A murmur of silence. Tree crests peeked down at Paulette through slowly lifting fog. Bark felt around for its texture again. Morning gathered and...

Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.

In all ages woman has been the source of all that is pure, unselfish, and heroic in the spirit and life of man…..poetry and fiction are based upon woman’s love, and the movements of history...

Maybe it was that nearly everyone else was dead and she felt a little bit dead too, but she figured that even a vampire deserved to be saved. Maybe she ought to leave him, but...

I was too much of a Bronx kid to read Emerson or Hawthorne.

Fotoğrafı kaldırmaya isteksiz görünüyordu; bir müddet daha, oyalanırcasına onu gözümün önünde tuttu. Yeniden cüzdanına koyduktan sonra, bu defa cebinden Hopalang Cassidy adlı eski bir kitap çıkardı “Şuna bir bak, bunu çocukken hiç elinden düşürmezdi. Daha...

A picture with one word on it is like a thousand-and-one-word piece of literature. At this rate, I should be done with my million-word novel in about 999 minutes.

A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but...

Onlar göze aldıklarına göre, ben de göze alacağım. Gerçeği söyleyeceğim, çünkü kendisine kurala uygun olarak başvurulan adaletin bunu eksiksiz olarak yapmaması durumunda, söyleyeceğime söz verdim. Benim görevim konuşmak, suç ortağı olmak istemiyorum. Yoksa gecelerim orada,...

If you`re wondering how you`ll find time, it means you don`t really want to read. Because nobody`s ever got time. Children certainly haven`t, nor have teenagers or grown-ups. Life always gets in the way. Time...

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter in all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us...

I grow weary of the loveThat lasts for a nightWhen it should be thereThe next sunrise

Fiction, with its preference for what is small and might elsewhere seem irrelevant; its facility for smuggling us into another skin and allowing us to live a new life there; its painstaking devotion to what...

La emoción trágica, efectivamente, es una cara que mira en dos direcciones: hacia el terror y hacia la piedad, y ambos son fases de ella. Habrás visto que uso la palabra paraliza. Quiero decir que...

The castle? The monster? The man of learning? I only just thought of it. Surely you know that just as the momentous events of the past cast their shadows down the ages, so now, when...

The poet must always, in every instance, have the vibrant word… that by it’s trenchancy can so wound my soul that it whimpers…. One must know and recognize not merely the direct but the secret...