Literature Quotes

"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."

"One of the main purposes is to explain why the studies found in the literature have such divergent results."

"Literature becomes the living memory of a nation."

"A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature."

"Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society . . . loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read."

"Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart."

"Literature and Society in the First Modern Period, 321 B.C. - A.D. 235,"

"In a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read."

"The only privilege literature deserves - and this privilege it requires in order to exist - is the privilege of being in the arena of discourse, the place where the struggle of our languages can be acted out."

"I'm thinking of reading something by chef Paul Prudhomme. It's a reading of all kinds of Southern literature."

"The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it"

"The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive."

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

"In science, read by preference the newest works. In literature, read the oldest. The classics are always modern."

"The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good."

"Literature is a term that cannot be applied to writings or poems that reel off tales that are false. It should not emerge from the egotistic fancies of the individual."

"They know where the people are. But what are they doing for the people they're handing the literature to?"

"We are concerned that literature has been found in American mosques that has a message that is not tolerant, and we hope the people of Saudi Arabia will work with us as we try to deal with this issue,"

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

"A losing trade, I assure you, sir: literature is a drug."