Every island to a child is a treasure island.
P. D. JamesRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Great literature requires nurturing and attention to flourish.
This quote by P. D. James suggests that for significant literary works to emerge, they must be cultivated in an environment that values and supports literature. Neglectful or poor conditions yield little creativity and innovation, whereas a dedication to the literary arts can produce timeless masterpieces, akin to 'Middlemarch' by George Eliot, which is regarded as one of the great novels in English literature.
Themes
LiteratureGrowthCareNurturingCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of supporting local writers, one might quote P. D. James to emphasize the need for nurturing literary talent.
More from P. D. James
All quotes →If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.
P. D. JamesRead
I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.
P. D. JamesRead
What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.
P. D. JamesRead
Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.
P. D. JamesRead
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
P. D. JamesRead
Similar quotes
Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.
Stephen KingRead
We can be reluctant to recognize how much of our culture was literary, particularly now that so many of the institutional purveyors of literature happily have joined in proclaiming its death. A substantial number of Americans who believe they worship God actually worship three major literary characters: the Yahweh of the J Writer (earliest author of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers), the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark, and Allah of the Koran.
Harold BloomRead
The cry that 'fantasy is escapist' compared to the novel is only an echo of the older cry that novels are 'escapist' compared with biography, and to both cries one should make the same answer: that freedom to invent outweighs loyalty to mere happenstance, the accidents of history; and good readers should know how to filter a general applicability from a particular story.
Tom ShippeyRead
The end of a story must be stronger rather than weaker than the beginning, since it is the end which contains the denouement or culmination and which will leave the strongest impression upon the reader.
H. P. LovecraftRead
There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature.
Washington IrvingRead
We were trained as writers with the idea that literature is something that can change reality, that it's not just a very sophisticated entertainment but a way to act.
Mario Vargas LlosaRead