When people dis fantasy—mainstream readers and SF readers alike—they are almost always talking about one sub-genre of fantastic literature. They are talking about Tolkien, and Tolkien’s innumerable heirs. Call it ‘epic’, or ‘high’, or ‘genre’...

Of course, they were other things too. Sometimes they were even everything all together, but not fame, which was rooted in delusion and lies, if not ambition. Also, fame was reductive. Everything that ended in...

Read sometimes for the story, Bobby. Don’t be like the book-snobs who won’t do that. Read sometimes for the words – the language. Don’t be like the play-it-safers that won’t do that. But when you...

All I can tell you with certainty is that I, for one, have no self, and that I am unwilling or unable to perpetrate upon myself the joke of a self…. What I have instead...

Poetry is a good medium for revolutionary hope.

We were supposed to be an English literature class, but Miss Nesbitt used literature to teach real life. She said she didn’t have time to teach us like a regular English teacher–we were too far...

He had some taste for romance reading before he went to the university, where, we must confess, in justice to his college, he was cured of the love of reading in all its shapes; and...

You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as ROBINSON CRUSOE never was written, and never will be...

My theory on literature is an author who does not indulge in trashiness-writes about people you could introduce into your own home…he did not care to read a book or go to a play about...

The capital … shall form a fund, the interest of which shall be distributed annually as prizes to those persons who shall have rendered humanity the best services during the past year. … One-fifth to...

There is a line of poetry, a sentence in a fable, a word in an essay, by which my existence is justified; find that line, and immortality is assured.

This is surely the most significant of the elements that Tolkien brought to fantasy…. his arranged marriage between the Elder Edda and “The Wind in the Willows”–big Icelandic romance and small-scale, cozy English children’s book....

Bir insanın gençken kuvvetli karakteri yoksa, bir daha da olmaz.

Eğer insanoğlu hiç hastalanmazsa, isteklerine sınır tanımaz.

Anyone who says writing is easy isn’t doing it right.

The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy,...

letters”. Those letters are either delivered—they connect with an audience—or they don’t. For some, that audience is a few thousand college professors and some critics. For others, its twenty million women desperate for romance in...

Nature is an outcry, unpolished truth; the art—a euphemism—tamed wilderness.

When following God, Zero we never find.

Busy with the ugliness of the expensive success We forget the easiness of free beautyLying sad right around the corner, Only an instant removed, Unnoticed and squandered.

I enjoy it when the world smiles; the more smiles, the warmer I am.

There is nobody to wake up eternal seekers.

A star needs a star.

To accomplish the perfect perfection, a little imperfection helps.

Is it possible to write a poem or are these words just screams of outlaws exiled to the desert?

Your head is a lit chamber.

The world is a fairy tale; we are its guardians.

But it seems to me inevitable that any person who gives thoughtful and imaginative attention to literature must be awakened in his sensibilities, enlarged in his sympathies, sharpened in his critical faculties.

And literature frequently rises to heights that make it international.

Literature is an avenue to glory, ever open for those ingenious men who are deprived of honours or of wealth.

I had never kissed a boy, had never even considered that I might enjoy such an unclean thing, until literature opened my eyes.

Literature shrivels in a universal language, and an uprooted language rots before it dies. And it should be possible to lift the eyes above the cant of the ‘language of Shakespeare’… sufficiently to realise the...

A great book allows me to leap over that wall: in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness, I feel human and unalone.

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.

The literature hardly helps. You remember it only when you are well, healthy, and in a positive state of mind. And you tend to blame your circumstances and people around you for the outcome of...

Resta-nos esclarecer a parte que nesse golfo fantástico cabe ao imaginário indireto, ou seja, o conjunto de imagens que a cultura nos fornece, seja ela cultura de massa ou outra forma de tradição. Esta questão...

Zola’nın italyan kökeni bile bir aşağılama nedeni olur. Bir gazeteci “Yarı-İtalyan, çeyrek Yunan, çeyrek Fransız, üç-dört kez kırma, hiç de güzel bir insanlık örneği değil!” diye yazar.

… I don’t know what to say.’‘That’s okay. Sometimes talking is like singing in a storm.’‘Like when you’re scared?’‘Exactly.’‘Or when you’re sad?’‘That too. A voice can be reassuring.

They were readers for whom literature was a drug, each complex plot line delivering a new high, suspending them above reality, allowing them a magical crossover…They had spoken often, with rueful honesty, of how the...

You can’t memorize poetry and stay a fake. Sooner or later, you start to understand what these poets are saying, and it makes you feel life has something quite special, with certain layers of meaning...

Bu iki rahibenin bana Katolik olup olmadığımı sormadıklarına bu nedenle memnun olmuştum. Sorsalardı, konuşmamız berbat olmazdı, ama ben de herhalde farklı davranırdım.

Eles não podem agir de outra maneira, os senhores da criação. O privilégio da criação lhes é irrenunciável. Nós, mulheres, temos que ser criaturas, sim, e criaturas perfeitas. Sejamos agradecidas aos cavaleiros suecos, principalmente ao...

He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.

Il (Georges Perros) arrivait le mardi matin, ébouriffé de vent et de froid sur sa moto bleue et rouillée. Voûté, dans un caban marine, la pipe à la bouche ou dans sa main. Il vidait...

I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long...

O, great wise man,’ she said, ‘I have been wondering so many things. Is life more than sitting at home doing the same thing over and over? Wise man, is life more than watching one’s...

Who is the most worthy of admiration, musician or audience?Probably the musician will tell that his audience and the musician that his audience

Jane believes me, don’t you Jane?

A fear of the unknown: what was that called?Worse yet: a fear of the known.

Gormenghast. Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracts. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue of spires a zephyr floats; a bird whistles; a freshet beats away from...