One hand I extend into myself, the other toward others.

You are not what you are; You are darkness Looking for light within.

When I want to be reminded of stupidity, especially my own, I turn on the TV.

To cut and tighten sentences is the secret of mastery.

They blossomed, they did not talk about blossoming.

We like to admit to only that which already glows, although it is nobler to support brightness before it glows, not afterwards.

Sunbathe from within.

…there are only two things that really matter in life. Literature and love.

With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.

what is the significance of the Misfit’s hat?” I said it was to cover his head; and after that he left me alone. Anyway, that’s what’s happening to the teaching of literature.

Literature deals with morality but does not necessarily, does not, qua literature, help you to be more moral, either by precept or example. It makes you more aware. Which is to say that it makes...

A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually...

The pretentiousness of literature really annoys me; the way a writer is held as this sort of magical person to be revered on the stage. Everything I do on tour is to try and destroy...

If a novel’s salient aim is virtue, I want to throw it against the wall.

There is nothing in the world which an artist cannot recreate into something poetic, ennobling. And why do we read these things? They are not facts, they do not improve our business skills, our techniques...

Writing is about taking everyday observations, things which people see almost every day of their lives, and yet bringing it to their attention for the very first time.

..the writer’s obsession – the desire to know and communicate, or, rather, to know everything so as to communicate with the greatest degree of precision.

I ask of literature precisely those things of which I feel the lack in my own life.

I think of science fiction as being part of the great river of imaginative fiction that has flowed through English literature, probably for 400 or 500 years, well predating modern science.

The fairy tale belongs to the poor…I know of no fairy tale which upholds the tyrant, or takes the part of the strong against the weak. A fascist fairy tale is an absurdity.

Una mujer es como la buena literatura: al alcance de todos, pero incomprensible para los estúpidos.

With the windows in his top of the range Audi firmly in place we slowly baked ourselves and chatted over why my hatred of golf was wrong, what made a good antihero and why Paul...

The idea of a successful novel was something that was reviewed in the Observer and then sank without trace. Literature wasn’t a happening thing in those days. Music and fringe theatre and television playwriting were...

The literature of impotence is about to develop beyond measure.

As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.

In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.

I wished I hadn’t majored in women filling their pockets with stones and sticking their heads into ovens. Maybe tomorrow the pinhole would widen and I would want to be a marine biologist.

Reading is a time machine that allows you to acquire wisdom from the past and to analyze and imagine another person’s vision of the future.

You will come across people who always affirm by everything you say, but at the hour of need, they simply disappear! Stay away from such people or simply don’t fall for their promises.

A chronic poet should always be an inveterate nature-lover.

Why is contemporary China short of works that speak directly? Because we writers cannot speak directly, or rather we can only speak in an indirect way.Why does contemporary China lack good works that critique our...

Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.

Ah, a literatura!… – exclamou. – Meu amigo, ler não é pensar a sós: ler é dialogar! Porém o diálogo da leitura é um diálogo platónico: o teu interlocutor constitui uma ideia. Contudo não se...

Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none

We nurture the candle flames that show the way ahead. We are guerrillas of the word, unsung heroes breathing softly on the embers of the human mind, so that they might re-ignite the hearths around...

And I had just kissed my ex-girlfriend, who had cried, while my current girlfriend was in jail. So far, it had not been my best day.

The past gathered out of the darkness where it stayed, and the dead raised themselves to live before him; and the past and the dead flowed into the present among the alive, so that he...

Literature helps us transcend ourselves.

To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.

A page of a book is like a human face. Look at a page by Hemingway and compare it with Sterne and Marcel Proust. They are different typographical beings. But force upon them those ragged...

A good book is an event in my life.

Knowing, above all, that I would come looking, and find what he had left for me, all that remained of The Jungle Book in the pocket of his doctor’s coat, that folder-up, yellowed page torn...

All classes in proportion to their lack of travel and familiarity with foreign literature are bellicose, prejudiced against foreigners, fond of fighting as a cruel sport — in short, dog-like in their notions of foreign...

A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. (young adult). is the Garden of Eden of literature.

Literature in the written sense represents the triumph of language over writing: the subversion of writing for purposes that have little or nothing to do with social and economic control.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

It may be whispered to those uninitiated people who are anxious to know the habits and make the acquaintance of men of letters, that there are no race of people who talk about books, or,...

Interestingly, this speech by Prospero does not contrast the unreality of the stage with the solid, flesh-and-blood existence of real men and women. On the contrary, it seizes on the flimsiness of dramatic characters as...

If we have no heretics we must invent them, for heresy is essential to health and growth.

Perhaps the truth is that heavy literature blooms in extremes of temperature.