Literature Quotes

Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory.

Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this - death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

Exciting literature after supper is not the best digestive.

Intimate relationships are a gold mine for literature to explore, to understand, to describe.

Let philosophy resolutely aim to be as scientific as possible, but let her not forget her strong kinship with literature.

Literature delivers tidings of the world within and the world without.

Wherever you look there are inspirations, books, literature, paintings, landscapes, everything. Just living is an inspiration.

The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

I get up at an unholy hour in the morning my work day is completed by the time the sun rises. I have a slightly bad back which has made an enormous contribution to American literature.

In the order of literature, as in others, there is no act that is not the coronation of an infinite series of causes and the source of an infinite series of effects.

The establishment, the newspapers, they try to create something called Scottish literature, but when people are actually going to write, they are not going to necessarily prescribe to that, they'll write what they feel.

My family pleaded with me to forget literature and do something sensible, such as find some sort of useful work.

The proverbial philosophy of a people helps us to understand more about them than any other kind of literature.

In the same period, Polish literature also underwent some significant changes. From social-political literature, which had a great tradition and strong motivation to be that way, Polish literature changed its focus to a psychological rather than a social one.

What good is a writer if he can't destroy literature? And us... what good are we if we don't help as much as we can in that destruction?

What had brought me to New York in the autumn of 1972 was a letter of recommendation written by Norman Mailer, the author of 'The Naked and the Dead' and American literature's leading heavyweight contender, to Dan Wolf, the delphic editor of 'The Village Voice.'

Journalism students need to understand it and need a solid background in the liberal arts, in sociology, economics, literature and language, because they won't get it later on.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

If you say city to people, people have no problem thinking of the city as rife with problematic, screwed-up people, but if you say suburbs - and I'm not the first person to say this, it's been said over and over again in literature - there's a sense of normalcy.

Literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor.

I began as a boy with artistic talent... as a visual artist... I thought that was what I'd become and in my late teens drifted into reading serious literature.

Literature is about as unnecessarily necessarily as tableware or ironed shirts.

Wisdom finds its literary expression in wisdom literature.

Films for TV have to be much closer to the book, mainly because the objective with a TV movie that translates literature is to get the audience, after seeing this version, to pick up the book and read it themselves. My attitude is that TV can never really be any form of art, because it serves audience expectations.

People whose understanding and taste in literature, painting, and music are beyond question are, for the most part, ignorant of what is good or bad art in the theater.

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

In a real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read. It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.

In all highly civilised communities Pretence is prominent, and sooner or later invades the regions of Literature.