A big lemoncolored cat watched him from the top of a woodstove. He turned his head to see it better and it elongated itself like hot taffy down the side of the stove and vanished...

[T]he imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.

Bir tek tutkum var; Bunca acılar çeken ve mutluluğa hakkı olan insanlık adına duyduğum aydınlık tutkusu. Coşkulu protestom, yüreğimden kopan çığlıktan başka bir şey değildir. Beni ağır ceza mahkemesi önüne çıkarmayı göze alsınlar ve herkesin...

Harold Bloom weeps for me.

Any man living in complete luxury and security who chooses to write a play or a novel which causes a flutter and exchange of compliments in Chelsea and Chiswick and a faint thrill in Streatham...

Oh! Do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.

InsomniaI wonderIf those talks matterFew done in the clarity of dayOr the manyDone at 3 a.m. in the morning

Literature wasn’t intended to be about perfect people, it was about flaws, very real and very deep human flaws.

Call them from their houses, and teach them to dream.

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.

My own mother, who’s always dazzled by my faculty and answering questions in the literature a category on Jeopardy whenever we watch it together, keeps urging me to try to get on the show to...

Kucaklarındaki kedileri okşaya okşaya balkonlu ve teraslı evlere doğru yürüdüler. Esrar ve ekmek paralarını zavallı tekirlerin sırtından kazanıyorlardı.

There is an incompatibility between literary creation and political activity.

I was beginning to understand something I couldn’t articulate. It was a jazzy feeling in my chest, a fluttering, a kind of buzzing in my brain. Warmth. Life. The circulation of blood. Sanguinity. I don’t...

The bullet that has hit us Muslims today left the gun centuries ago when we let the clergy decide that knowledge and education were not important.

The only way that you can identify and then fulfill your life’s purpose is for you to love yourself, charge up your life and serve the world.

You should never read just for “enjoyment.” Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends’ insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick “hard books.” Ones you have to concentrate...

He thought of trying to explain something he had recently noticed about himself: that if anyone insulted him, or one of his friends, he didn’t really mind–or not much, anyway. Whereas if anyone insulted a...

Literature is a microscope; it shows us the unseen!

The world has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe...

My words, my writing, my actions—these have never been for myself alone, either directly or indirectly. There is no such thing as an artist who creates art only for himself. That is masturbation.

I’m not ashamed of heroic ambitions. If man and woman can only dance upon this earth for a few countable turns of the sun… let each of us be an Artemis, Odysseus, or Zeus… Aphrodite...

Better to keep it in the old heads, where no one can see it or suspect it. We are all bits and pieces of history and literature and international law. Byron, Tom Paine, Machiavelli, or...

Real poetry is art at its purest sense. It is never a commodity, but a breath of eternity.

Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time. But when the pollen again gilded the sun and sifted down on the world she began to stand around the gate...

Time is a river…and books are boats. Many volumes start down that stream, only to be wrecked and lost beyond recall in its sands. Only a few, a very few, endure the testings of time...

There’s a saying,” Aeneas said: “Keep an eye on Greeks when they offer gifts.” He spoke wryly. “Horses, particularly.

For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately.

Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.

Literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain — the brain, that stomach of the soul. Literature must be taken...

Is it foolish to care for non-existent folk?Then, leave me to my foolishness.

Mother used to say that however miserable one is, there’s always something to be thankful for. And each morning, when the sky brightened and light began to flood my cell, I agreed with her.

You probably think of the orchestra as a heterogeneous mass of instrumentsproducing a confused agreeable massof sound. You do not listen for details because you have never trained your ears to listen to details.

In literature one has the best company in the world at complete command; one also has the worst. One has a social conscience which dissuades one from harbouring unprofitable company in life, and I find...

If you want to know a country, read its writers.

We shared a daughter? I’d not thought about it that way before. If we shared a daughter, and something happened to Claire, then I would not have to hare Esther with her anymore. I would...

Hademelerin kendi aralarında kullandıkları şu deyimin anlamını ise şimdi kavramıştı: ” Bu da yakında çarşaflanacak.

Some books must be sipped slowly like a strong bourbon. Most books must be devoured more than once because as you age you distill more.

we must bringour own lightto thedarkness.

He gave it its present name, and lived here shut up: day and night poring over the wicked heaps of papers in the suit, and hoping against hope to disentangle it from its mystification and...

Dear Literary World, Sorry for breaking down your door…I’ll pay for that!!! Since I’m here and planning to stay a while, let me tell you some stories!!

The most complicated skill is to be simple.

Since there is no real silence, Silence will contain all the sounds, All the words, all the languages, All knowledge, all memory.

All people are enslaved by something.

Mathematics doesn’t care about those beyond the numbers.