Literary Quotes

As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and the consistent narrowness of his outlook.

Sometimes there's a snobbery among literary types that these people don't really get it, but in a lot of ways they get it more than the literati. There's a culture in the background that they understand and know. They get that deeper level.

So I'm not a Southern writer in the commonly held sense of the term, like Faulkner or Eudora Welty, who took the South for their entire literary environment and subject matter.

One effect that the Nobel Prize seems to have had is that more Arabic literary works have been translated into other languages.

I have always loved reading, so was interested in the literary world, and took many literary portraits.

Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least.

The great break of my literary career was going to law school.

A life spent largely among books, and in the exercise of a literary profession, has very obvious drawbacks, as a subject-matter, when one comes to write about it.

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear - and even, in certain respects, would be - the most modern of critical movements.

Anonymous sources are a practice of American journalism in the 20th and 21st century, a relatively recent practice. The literary tradition of anonymity goes back to the Bible.

I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway.

The point of literary criticism in anthropology is not to replace research, but to find out how it is that we are persuasive.

There are two methods for the literary study of any book - the first being the study of its thought and emotion; the second only that of its workmanship. A student of literature should study some of the Bible from both points of view.

Mysteries and thrillers are not the same things, though they are literary siblings. Roughly put, I would say the distinction is that mysteries emphasize motive and psychology whereas thrillers rely more heavily on action and plot.

People aren't quite sure what it means when a book is a Booker Prize winner. They're not quite sure what is being recommended, what literary values it stands for, because every year it stands for something different.

Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing they're whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to.

Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony.

We served on the editorial board of a literary monthly called Face in 1968 and 1969. He was a young writer, and I was also interested in broad cultural issues. We agreed on all major issues and became friends.

A literary critic is someone who can't write, but who loves to show he would have been a wonderful writer if only he could!

During half a century of literary work, I have endeavoured to introduce the philosophy of evolution into the sphere of literature, and to inspire my readers to think in evolutionary terms.

I wonder what it means about American literary culture and its transmission when I consider the number of American poets who earn their living teaching creative writing in universities. I've ended up doing that myself.

When I put together a graphic novel, I don't think about literary prose. I think about storytelling.

I might have simply settled down into an armchair literary life. I really don't know exactly why I didn't.

One of the great privileges of having grown up in a middle-class literary English household, but having gone to school in the front lines in Southeast London, was that I became half-street-urchin and half-good-boy at home. I knew that dichotomy was possible.

Doesn't all experience crumble in the end to mere literary material?

The Bible was written in several languages, embraces many literary forms, and reflects cultures very different from our own. These are important considerations for properly understanding the Bible in its context.

First would be the literary side, then the spiritual and philosophical. The political side is required principally because of the necessity of the current Russian position.

The aim of literary ambition is to demonstrate one's greatness of soul.

There might be a different model for a literary community that's quicker, more real-time, and involves more spontaneity.