353 Quotes About Literary-fiction

...the pleasures of literary fiction are the pleasures of orientation; the pleasures of literature are the pleasures of bewilderment.

With more time spent in their mother's presence, Maggie kept topics of conversation to small stuff, seldom ever wanted to dig below the surface, learned from her mother: just be polite, which makes Callie's own facile mental questioning and creative drive, paired with her physical rigidity, all the more oppositional, and, how they dance around serious subjects, laughable.

The world is full of sluts on skates. From Penn-warren's "All the Kings Men.

She would owe this understanding to her time in New York, and even more to Louise. That's what spending time with the young can do--it's the big payoff for all the pain. The young can exasperate, of course, and frighten, and condescend and insult, and cut you with their still unrounded edges. But they can also drag you, as you protest and scold and try to pull away, right up to the window of the future, and even push you through.

Now when the men talk, their voices burn in the air, making smoke all over the place. We hear about change, about new country, about democracy, about elections and what-what.They talk and talk, the men, lick their lips and look at the dead watches on their wrists and shake their heads and slap each other and laugh like they have swallowed thunder.

In any case how many took the oath and are now licking the toes of the whiteman?No, you take an oath to confirm a choice already made. The decision to lay or not lay your life for the people lies in the heart. The oath is the water sprinkled on a man's head at baptism

We say of some things that they can't be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do -- we do it all the time.

Sometimes you can't wait for the rest of your life to come to you. You have to go to it. Or at least meet it half way.

When you turn around, you'll see something I bet you've never seen before. If it takes your breath away, then you'll fit in nicely. If you don't feel anything, then maybe you don't belong here.