Forget decorated generals, tell me about Private Ryan.

Either all lights are turned off or one inner light is missing.

Deceit dispels the boredom of the Absolute.

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.

Let us depart instead for the fields of Dreams and wander those blue, romantic hills where stands the abandoned tower of the Supernatural, where cool mosses clothe the ruins of Idealism. Let us, in short,...

I speak this way because I know how perilous speech can be…. A saber might be stopped by a shield. A bullet might be dodged by a stroke of luck. But you can’t dodge a...

Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.

Workshop Hermeticism, fiction for which the highest praise involves the words ‘competent,’ ‘finished,’ ‘problem-free,’ fiction over which Writing-Program pre- and proscriptions loom with the enclosing force of horizons: no character without Freudian trauma in accessible...

To write only according to the rules laid down by masterpieces signifies that one is not a master but a pupil.

It’s been a long time since the prize has gone to someone like that. Esthetic literature has dominated because, I think, the modernist trend has been to frown upon scientific literature,

They filed out in descending order by altitudes, the father first, out through the sunlit doors in a sextet of calico isotropes and into the street, the elder smiling, along through the crowds and down...

[…] og at han la særlig vekt på å gjennomgå Ibsens dramaer med sine elever, da var det den andre kunne si: Ja, Ibsen, ja, han ligger nok for høyt for meg, eller: Nei, du...

Suçladığım kişilere gelince: Hiçbirini tanımıyorum. Onları hiç görmedim. Kendilerine karşı ne hıncım var, ne kinim. Onlar benim için topluma kötülük eden kişilerden, kafalardan başka birşey değildir. Benim burada yaptığım şey gerçeğin ve adaletin ortaya çıkmasını...

A precious, mouldering pleasure ’t is To meet an antique book, In just the dress his century wore; A privilege, I think.

People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely...

They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing! There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the...

Phoebe’ye “Little Shirley Beans” adlı plağı almak istiyordum. Çok zor bulunan bir plaktı. Plak, iki ön dişi düştüğü için çok utandığından evinden dışarı çıkmayan küçük bir kız çocuğu hakkındaydı.

Modern civilization depends on science … James Smithson was well aware that knowledge should not be viewed as existing in isolated parts, but as a whole, each portion of which throws light on all the...

I don’t believe in writer’s block. Who can function working seven days a week at at job. It’s the same with writing. Take a break and let the words come to you. It rarely comes...

The best literature is always a take [in the musical sense]; there is an implicit risk in its execution, a margin of danger that is the pleasure of the flight, of the love, carrying with...

A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is.

The darkest of men carry the brightest of lights

Everyone makes mistakes, but only a few could forgive. Padahal ada banyak kesalahan yang hanya perlu dimaafkan, bukan dihukum. An eye for an eye will make us all blind.

A person who knows nothing about literature may be an ignoramus, but many people don’t mind being that.

playdate” is never initiated by the players (i.e., children), but only by their mothers.In American-suburban social climbing through playdating, this is the chapter you’ve been awaiting.

Aklına Şair Adam Mickiewicz’in heykeli gelince gözleri parladı.

The fault I find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four books in a lifetime give us...

Atunci am înțeles că nimic nu durează în suflet, că cea mai verificată încredere poate fi anulată de un singur gest, că cele mai sincere posesiuni nu dovedesc niciodată nimic, căci și sinceritatea poate fi...

Salah satu bentuk kemalasan seorang perempuan adalah untuk mencari jati diri yang selanjutnya paska berumahtangga. Rasa kenyamanan memang bisa menghancurkan.

We can sum up the surrealist distinction between ‘literature’ and ‘poetry’ by saying where the former is artificial, fictive and elusive, the latter is natural, real, direct and spontaneous.

I think it all basically breaks down to something like this: You have to look and feel great first. If you eat well, exercise and get enough sleep, you will have ample energy and the...

To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength.

Your page stands against you and says to you that you are a thief.

To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent.

You can’t eat [literature], that’s the problem,” he said. “I’ve tried, it’s very dry, and not at all nutritious.

Sir,’ said Stephen, ‘I read novels with the utmost pertinacity. I look upon them–I look upon good novels–as a very valuable part of literature, conveying more exact and finely-distinguished knowledge of the human heart and...

I will always know the glory of the beautiful and rare, as they will know security from labour and prayer. As they will hear the laughter of the children they gave life, I will know...

A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot....

Lo que hay que evitar, no sé por qué, es el espíritu de sistema.

It is just dawn, daylight: that gray and lonely suspension filled with the peaceful and tentative waking of birds. The air, inbreathed, is like spring water. He breathes deep and slow, feeling with each breath...

Less is Moor.

People are never satisfied. If they have a little, they want more. If they have a lot, they want still more. Once they have more, they wish they could be happy with little, but are...

The act of true reading is in its very essence democratic. Consider the nature of what happens when we read a book – and I mean, of course, a work of literature, not an instruction...

And since a novel has this correspondence to real life, its values are to some extent those of real life. But it is obvious that the values of women differ very often from the values...

I’d always admired writers. I’d always loved words on a page. Somehow, words seemed to bypass image and get straight to the heart of things. Somehow, words seemed big enough to contain pain, and sentences...

There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction, and, despite John Ray’s assertion, Lolita has no...

Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did...

Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination.

The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemly or...

NOVEL, n. A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions...