…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.

Pienso que en la vida de cada uno de nosotros existe un libro similar, que de pequeños no nos limitamos simplemente a leer, sino que inspeccionamos y rebuscamos en cada uno de sus rincones como...

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

There it was, happiness in a backward glance: happiness and the certainty of hope.

Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be.(Southey’s reply to Charlotte Bronte)

It appeared that the swift wings of their desires would have shattered against the iron gates of the impossible.

I do not share the pessimism of the age about the novel. They are one of our greatest spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual inventions. As a species it is story that distinguishes us, and one of...

No magic Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lyingas in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men.

The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose....

Molly Bloom is simply the most sensuous woman in literature.

If people cannot be flawed in fiction there’s no place left for us to be human.

If we go on in this way, we shall have a new art of poetry, of which one of the first rules will be: To remember to forget that there are any such things as...

A lot of performing instincts are involved in the business of direction, but so is analysis and having a sense of literature.

Children’s and YA books are about being brave and kind, about learning wisdom and love, about that journey into and through maturity that we all keep starting, and starting again, no matter how old we...

The ability to read becomes devalued when what one has learned to read adds nothing of importance to one’s life.

We read to under­stand our intu­ition of the world, to dis­cover that some­one a thou­sand miles and years away has put into words our most inti­mate desires and our most secret fears. Reading is a...

My passion has always been books and literature, and teaching.

En yakın arkadaşım, Matriyona yoktu artık… Son gününde bir kazak yüzünden nasılda azarlamıştım!

Adlar daima insana dert oluyordu. Hayat ve zevkler değişir ama adlar kalır.

Literature cannot be imposed; it must be discovered.