After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person.
Evelyn WaughRead
If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests an attempt to control literature within a country while resisting external influences.
Evelyn Waugh's quote reflects a concern over the impact of foreign literature on a national cultural identity. It implies that if a government or society cannot entirely eliminate literature that it disagrees with, it can at least make efforts to prevent external influences from permeating its own literary landscape, highlighting the ongoing tension between censorship and cultural exchange.
Themes
LiteratureCensorshipCultural IdentityInfluenceNationalism
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the importance of protecting local culture during a literature festival.
More from Evelyn Waugh
All quotes →It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
Evelyn WaughRead
There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.
Evelyn WaughRead
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.
Evelyn WaughRead
...she had regained what I thought she had lost forever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, "Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?
Evelyn WaughRead
That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty.
Evelyn WaughRead
Similar quotes
Novels institutionalize the ruse of eros. It becomes a narrative texture of sustained incongruence, emotional and cognitive. It permits the reader to stand in triangular relation to the characters in the story and reach into the text after the objects of their desire, sharing their longing but also detached from it, seeing their view of reality but also its mistakenness. It is almost like being in love.
Anne CarsonRead
The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible.
Washington IrvingRead
When we're done with it, we may find—if it's a good novel—that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having meet a new face, crossed a street we've never crossed before.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
In a word, 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. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importance compared with their "large loves and heavenly charities.
Helen KellerRead
Every novel is an equal collaboration between the writer and the reader and it is the only place in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.
Paul AusterRead
As a reader I loathe introductions...Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.
Harper LeeRead