Quotes on Literature

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

I was terrible at straight items. When I wrote obituaries, my mother said the only thing I ever got them to do was die in alphabetical order.

How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?

Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.

Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang's feeble imagination.

I recognize the Republican Party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.

We must not sit still and look for miracles; up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

Tis the only comfort of the miserable to have partners in their woes.

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.

Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.

My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious.

Journalist: a person without any ideas but with an ability to express them; a writer whose skill is improved by a deadline: the more time he has, the worse he writes.

An idea's birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.

I did toy with the idea of doing a cook-book . . . The recipes were to be the routine ones: how to make dry toast, instant coffee, hearts of lettuce and brownies. But as an added attraction, at no extra charge, my idea was to put a fried egg on the cover. I think a lot of people who hate literature but love fried eggs would buy it if the price was right.

England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.

Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of a human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed

The foolish are like ripples on water, For whatsoever they do is quickly effaced; But the righteous are like carvings upon stone, For their smallest act is durable.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and - since there is no other metaphor - also the soul.