Quotes about literature

"The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash."

Hawthorne, Nathaniel on literature   

"It is a good lesson --though it may often be a hard one --for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of all significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at."

Hawthorne, Nathaniel on literature   

"How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him."

Hemingway, Ernest on literature   

"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."

Hemingway, Ernest on literature
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"All you can be sure about in a political-minded writer is that if his work should last you will have to skip the politics when you read it. Many of the so-called politically enlisted writers change their politics frequently . Perhaps it can be respected as a form of the pursuit of happiness."

Hemingway, Ernest on literature   

"Now a writer can make himself a nice career while he is alive by espousing a political cause, working for it, making a profession of believing in it, and if it wins he will be very well placed. All politics is a matter of working hard without reward, or with a living wage for a time, in the hope of booty later. A man can be a Fascist or a Communist and if his outfit gets in he can get to be an ambassador or have a million copies of his books printed by the Government or any of the other rewards the boys dream about."

Hemingway, Ernest on literature   

"The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do."

Hemingway, Ernest on literature   

"There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention."

Hemingway, Ernest on literature   

"The self-styled intellectual who is impotent with pen and ink hungers to write history with sword and blood."

Hoffer, Eric on literature   

"Literature flourishes best when it is half trade and half an art."

Inge, Dean William R. on literature   

"It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature."

James, Henry on literature   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch."

James, P. D. on literature   

"The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper -- whether little or great, it belongs to Literature."

Jewett, Sarah Orne on literature   

"Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness."

Keller, Helen on literature
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"In the electronic age, books, words and reading are not likely to remain sufficiently authoritative and central to knowledge to justify literature."

Kernan, Alvin on literature   

"For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?"

Kundera, Milan on literature   

"The present era grabs everything that was ever written in order to transform it into films, TV programs; or cartoons. What is essential in a novel is precisely what can only be expressed in a novel, and so every adaptation contains nothing but the non-essential. If a person is still crazy enough to write novels nowadays and wants to protect them, he has to write them in such a way that they cannot be adapted, in other words, in such a way that they cannot be retold."

Kundera, Milan on literature   

"Despair, feeding, as it always does, on phantasmagoria, is imperturbably leading literature to the rejection, en masse, of all divine and social laws, towards practical and theoretical evil."

Lautreamont, Isidore Ducasse, Comte De on literature   

"Oh literature, oh the glorious Art, how it preys upon the marrow in our bones. It scoops the stuffing out of us, and chucks us aside. Alas!"

Lawrence, D. H. on literature   

"Literature is a toil and a snare, a curse that bites deep."

Lawrence, D. H. on literature   

"Literature must become party literature. Down with unpartisan litterateurs! Down with the superman of literature! Literature must become a part of the general cause of the proletariat."

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich on literature   

"Literature is analysis after the event."

Lessing, Doris on literature   

"Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead."

Lewis, Sinclair on literature   

"A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on literature   

"With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on literature   

"There is an incompatibility between literary creation and political activity."

Llosa, Mario Vargas on literature   

"The pure work implies the disappearance of the poet as speaker, who hands over to the words."

Mallarme, Stephane on literature   

"Literature... is condemned (or privileged) to be forever the most rigorous and, consequently, the most reliable of terms in which man names and transforms himself."

Man, Paul De on literature   

"Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being."

Man, Paul De on literature   

"In literature, as in love, we are astonished at the choice made by other people."

Maurois, Andre on literature   

"It is not the first duty of the novelist to provide blueprints for insurrection, or uplifting tales of successful resistance for the benefit of the opposition. The naming of what is there is what is important."

Mcewan, Ian on literature   

"For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books."

Melville, Herman on literature   

"That is a very good question. I don't know the answer. But can you tell me the name of a classical Greek shoemaker?"

Miller, Arthur on literature   

"What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature."

Miller, Henry on literature   

"What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That's what their substance is."

Miller, Jonathan on literature   

"A literary movement consists of five or six people who live in the same town and hate each other cordially."

Moore, George on literature   

"Literature, the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions."

Morley, John on literature   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Learning why one great book is just like every other great book is the key to understanding literature"

Moschitta, John on literature   

"Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions."

Murdoch, Iris on literature   

"I am not a literary man. I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech."

Murray, Jim on literature