The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.
The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.
I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.
There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.
Writing detective stories is about writing light literature, for entertainment. It isn't primarily a question of writing propaganda or classical literature.
The book of the Psalms, which is the primary devotional literature of the whole Bible, is full of complaints.
The distinction between literary and genre fiction is stupid and pernicious. It dates back to a feud between Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James. James won, and it split literature into two streams. But it's a totally false dichotomy.
When I went to college - when I read Shakespeare or Dickens or Scott - I just felt that, as a citizen of England, a British citizen, this was as much my heritage as any schoolboy's. That is one of the things the Empire taught, that apart from citizenship, the synonymous inheritance of the citizenship was the literature.
I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.
A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
At a very young age, I was influenced enormously by Julio Cortazar or Carlos Fuentes. In that literature, there's always an exploration of different perspectives, points of view.
Exciting literature after supper is not the best digestive.
I am more and more convinced that literature is made up of works, genres, schools, discussions, problems, collective work in order to solve certain problems.
Romeo is the most misunderstood character in literature, I think. He's hardcore to play because he's displaying the characteristics of Hamlet at the beginning, and, well, then everything else happens.
'Religion,' I should note, has a disputed etymology in Latin: some say it's from 'relegere,' meaning 'to reread', while others say it's from religare, meaning 'to connect' or 'link.' Literature is life's fastener.
It is essential to naturalist doctrine that literature, to be good, must, finally, be the author's experience worked out literally.
The Bible is literature, not dogma.
It seems to me that an author who has determined very new domains in literature is Gertrude Stein.
