Quotes on Literature

Her great merit is finding out mine; there is nothing so amiable as discernment.

There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.

There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.

Fantasy is my genre and my home in the writing world. I consider it the biggest writing room in all literature, where there are literally no boundaries at all.

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, this it overflows upon the outward world.

Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds.

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!

I think it's a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book - in short, it's something unworthy of a serious critic's attention.

There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.

Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.

The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.

To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.

It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.

The future is like heaven-everyone exalts it but no one wants to go there now.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.

The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.

Work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts inevitably bring about right results.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear.