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...

We all have a book in us. The first step is recognising this. Writing it is a whole new journey.

The metaphysicians of Tlön are not looking for truth, nor even for an approximation of it; they are after a kind of amazement.

Jonah-John-if I had been a Sam, I would have been a Jonah still-not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places, at certain times,...

Even if we try to conform to ideals and strive for perfection, we will always be pulled back to our core identity because it’s the path of least resistance for our souls – an energy...

Of four infernal rivers that disgorge/ Into the burning Lake their baleful streams;/Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,/Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;/Cocytus, nam’d of lamentation loud/ Heard on the rueful stream; fierce...

Newer teachers also have a broader perspective on literature.

The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.

The text contains no literary criticism. I wanted to describe books, not to be clever at their expense.

Her constant orders for beheading are shocking to those modern critics of children’s literature who feel that juvenile fiction should be free of all violence and especially violence with Freudian undertones. Even the Oz books...

Apollinaire said a poet should be ‘of his time.’ I say objects of the Digital Age belong in newspapers, not literature. When I read a novel, I don’t want credit cards; I want cash in...

Do you know why teachers use me? Because I speak in tongues. I write metaphors. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can remember. The great religions are all metaphor. We appreciate things...

You may be ableto fly to heaven with my love.But for real, my love is onlya cheap wine.Seriously,Only God’s love is the precious wine.And She evengives it to everyone.For free!

In my profession it isn’t a question of telling good literature from bad. Really good literature is seldom appreciated in its own day. The best authors die poor, the bad ones make money — it’s...

Current “literature” [is] well-written books in which disgusting people do disgusting things to other disgusting people for no apparent reason and with no apparent resolution.

Whoever is able to write a book and does not, it is as if he has lost a child

everything that is scatteredcomes together in wordseverything that is lostcomes back in poetry.