Fiction is the only way to redeem the formlessness of life

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.

There is a moonlight note in the Moonlight Sonata; there is a thunder note in an angry sky.

Without space, there is no time.

You mark and celebrate errors, transforming failures into successes.

Knighthood lies above eternity; it doesn’t live off fame, but rather deeds.

Water, wind and birdsong were the echoes in this quiet place of a great chiming symphony that was surging around the world. Knee-deep in grasses and moon daisies, Stella stood and listened, swaying a little...

Watson is a cheap, efficient little sod of a literary device. Holmes doesn’t need him to solve crimes any more than he needs a ten-stone ankle weight. The audience, Arthur. The audience needs Watson as...

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

Don’t forget to speak scornfully of the Victorian Age; there will be time for meekness when you try to better it. Very soon you will be Victorian or that sort of thing yourselves; next session...

More than at any other time, when I hold a beloved book in my hand my limitations fall from me, my spirit is free.

Thee, my serenity, one can not bear, Seeing thee befuddled, bereaved,Dimmed like the midnight, secluded, darkened,Thee, my serenity,A window to my eyes, A window to laughter, and peace of mind,Thee, my serenity, one can not...

The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.

It can also be useful to politics, enabling that science to discover how much of it is no more than verbal construction, myth, literary tops. Politics, like literature, must above all know itself and distrust...

Fransa’nın en büyük romancılarından birinin kopardığı “Üstelik bu insanlar uyuyabiliyorlar, eşleri ve çocukları var, onları seviyorlar!” çığlığını her okuyuşlarında yürekleri sızlayacak, kendi kendilerinden, kendi türlerinden utanacak, gerçek adalet özlemini bir kez daha duyacaklar.

Can you blame me, my dear, for looking on this attachment as a romantic folly inspired by that cursed Shakespeare who will poke his nose where he is not wanted?

It is the modern literature of the educated, not of the uneducated, which is avowedly and aggressively criminal..The vast mass of humanity, with their vast mass of idle books and idle words, have never doubted...

No man is offended by another man’s admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.

Tenis üzerine sizinle konuşmak filan, çocuğun çok hoşuna gidiyordu, ama anlıyordunuz, bir de Katolik olsaydınız çok daha hoşuna gidecekti.

Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.

The popular culture gives us books that offer entertainment but no ideas. High culture gives us books that offer ideas but no entertainment. The best books manage to do both.

All European writers are ‘slaves of their baptism,’ if I may paraphrase Rimbaud; like it or not, their writing carries baggage from an immense and almost frightening tradition; they accept that tradition or they fight...

Great literature makes a great life.