My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.

Blow Ye Trumpet.” Them Negroes was far away from the doings on the plaza where the Old Man was to hang, way out from it. But they sang it loud and clear….Blow ye trumpet blowBlow...

I don’t hold with shamans, witch doctors, or psychiatrists. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or even Dickens, understood more about the human condition than ever occurred to any of you. You overrated bunch of charlatans deal with the...

I would never attempt to dissuade anyone from reading a book. But please, if you’re reading something that’s killing you, put it down and read something else, just as you would reach for the remote...

There is nothing political about American literature.

…apparently “London” gave out my address! that’s what they’re saying…not just London, though! Brazzaville, too!…and said that I’m a dirty pornographer…a letch besides being the most despicable traitor of the century!…I’d make a urinal blush!...

When you’ve got a thing to say, Say it! Don’t take half a day.When your tale’s got little in itCrowd the whole thing in a minute! Life is short–a fleeting vapor–Don’t you fill the whole...

It is difficult to call myself a writer, even when I stand at a podium to receive a prize, I feel uncomfortable calling myself a writer—I am merely a word criminal.

When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.”[As attributed by Alastair Reid in Neruda and Borges, The New Yorker, June 24, 1996; as well as in The Talk...

Do you realize that all great literature — “Moby Dick,” “Huckleberry Finn,” “A Farewell to Arms,” “The Scarlet Letter,” “The Red Badge of Courage,” “The Iliad and The Odyssey,” “Crime and Punishment,” the Bible, and...

After reading Edgar Allan Poe. Something the critics have not noticed: a new literary world pointing to the literature of the 20th Century. Scientific miracles, fables on the pattern A+ B, a clear-sighted, sickly literature....

To become a ‘good reader’ one must give oneself over to a regime of concentrated pleasure. One does not set out to read a book a day (there is no necessary pleasure in that) but...

… she was a pudding of immaturity and precocious wisdom that had not yet set into a stable mold.

A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe.

Human beings don’t necessarily exist inside of (or correspond to) the neat racial, gendered or national boxes into which we often unthinkingly place them.It’s a mistake to ask literature to reinforce such structures. Literature tends...

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

Literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.

I’ve only been to jail a few times, but in several different countries, at that. No, I’ve only been to jail a few times. But I still claim the ability to write a “serious” novel.

An unhappy ending makes it literature rather than romantic fiction.

You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin , or even vagueness – ignorance, credulity – helps your enjoyment of...

If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the...

Ivanov had been a party member since 1902. Back then he had tried to write stories in the manner of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, or rather he had tried to plagiarize them without much success, which...

Monsters are real and ghosts are real too they live inside us and sometimes they win.

To my fellow writers’ I say, ‘Write. Build an imaginary world like nobody’s watching.

What matters in the end in literature, what is always there, is the truly good. And — though played out forms can throw up miraculous sports like The Importance of Being Earnest or Decline and...

The whole world’s writing novels, but nobody’s reading them. We need readers. More readers. Fewer writers.

lessons from life,” is embedded in all literature.

No. She reads literature.

You can be good for the mere sake of goodness; you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it...

Ah benim Dündar öğretmenim! Ah benim gazetelerim, liselerim,kaymakamlarım, babalarım, ağabeylerim, k h Alman, k h Amerikankılıklı askerlerim, çocuk yüzlü halkevlerim, ‘ Bir Türk bir dünyayabedel’lerim, marşlarım, heykellerim, Alman yengelerim ve ‘Tout va trèsbien Madame la...

There are books that speak to us of our own lives with a clarity we cannot match. They prevent the morose suspicion that we do not fully belong to the species, that we lie beyond...

Writing means being a fascinated slave to current events.

O sonbahar, kendimi örnek alarak, insanın bedeni cansızlaşmadan önce ölümün eşiğinden geçebileceğini öğrendim. Kanınız bedeninizde dolaşabilir ama psikolojik olarak ölüm için bütün hazırlıkları yapmış, ölümün kendisine tahammül etmişsinizdir. Çevrenizdeki her şeyi mezardan seyrediyor gibi ilgisizce...

most common people oft he market-place much prefer light literature to improving books. The problem is, that so many romances contain slanderous anecdotes about sovereigns and ministers or cast aspersions upon man’s wives and daughters...

I love rain because tears can not be seen in rain.

In contrast to England, half of whose literature seems to revolve around houses and estates, houses and estates being ready extensions of character, America has always found more value in the act of leaving one...

the Bradman class” denoted the highest kind of excellence: it would include Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Newton, Archimedes, and maybe a dozen others. Well, said Hardy, there had only been two additions in his lifetime. One was...

Dream by making and make by dreaming.

Art is apotheosis; often, the complaint of beauty.

In greatness, life and death merge.

Vandals listen only when others are stronger.If vandals are equal or strongerTheir word is the last word.

Unjustified ambition kills value,Kills someone else’s desire to fly, Cuts their wings, sucks their air.If there is nothing else, it eats its own life.

Before the first before and after the last after, there is night waiting.

He thought others were small; that was his greatness.

Truth is hard-hearted and unrelenting, too clear, precise; a lie is much more imaginative.

But the thing about Literature is, well, basically it encapsulates all the disciplines – it’s history, philosophy, politics, sexual politics, sociology, psychology, linguistics, science. Literature is mankind’s organised response to the world around him, or...

Kuandika hadithi ni kitu kimoja. Kuweka kanuni za fasihi katika hadithi ni kitu kingine.

The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened...

It is very easy to love alone.

Todo éxito es una apología de lo vulgar. Cualquier libro que rebasa los cien ejemplares es un fracaso para el buen gusto. ,O qué habría de pensarse de un mismo libro leído simultáneamente por cien...