4,370 Quotes About Literature

Treat your mind like a museum, not a warehouse

He had so long since ceased to direct his life toward any ideal goal, and had confined himself to the pursuit of quotidian satisfactions, that he had come to believe, though without ever formally stating his belief even to himself that he would remain all his life in that condition, which only death could alter.

The amount of meaning you get into a sentence, the dimensions and intensity of the impression you make a paragraph carry, are most extraordinary.... You once told me you were not a natural writer—my God! You have plainly mastered the craft, of course; but you needed far more than craftsmanship for this. [about The Great Gatsby]

That's the beauty and the curse of the 'engrafted word'... it all comes down to interpretation.

I think the novel is a wonder....it has vitality to an extraordinary degree, and glamour, and a great deal of underlying thought of unusual quality....And as for the sheer writing, it's astonishing. [About The Great Gatsby]

Utopia retains throughout its long history the basic form of the narrative of a journey... First comes the picture of a happy people in a beautiful and well-ordered setting; then comes the lecture on how it all came about, how it works, and, by implication, how it might be made to work in the traveller's own society.

Si nuestros más fervientes deseos secretos se realizaran, el universo se rompería en pedazos, como una bola de vidrio, en un instante. El arte es la región ignota del mundo. El misterio es la regla de oro de la creación, la obra en sí, la realización de un acto secreto. Sustraer a la forma del mundo para descubrirla, para entregarla luego desnuda, envuelta sólo con la belleza de lo nefando, a la mirada es, quizás, el más jubiloso e infame de los pecados imperdonables: el de crear.

Literature is analysis after the event.

Now, Max, I have told you many times that you are my publisher, and permanently, as far as one can fling about the word in this too mutable world....The idea of leaving you has never for one single moment entered my head.