#liter

As any student of literature knows, the books that last are often not the books that are most popular when they are written. Both 'Moby Dick' and 'The Great Gatsby' were complete failures, critically and commercially, when they first appeared. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#appeared #books #both #commercially #complete

A stubborn refusal of the conditions of 20th Century 'reality', surrealism has denied intransigently and consistently that modern man can live without a sense of wonder at the world that was once embodied in myth. In approaching literature, it has aimed at restoring to the word its magical qualities. And at giving back to language the elemental power it once had within society. This determinism lies at the heart of the surrealist attitude and distinguishes it radically from the modernism which took shape contemporaneously with it. ↗

— Michael Richardson

#literature #magic #modernism #myth #surrealism

I came literally to the table with a wealth of knowledge by simply understanding how food should taste. ↗

— Rocco DiSpirito

#food #how #i #i came #knowledge

Melville brought to the task a sound knowledge of actual whaling, much curious learning in the literature of the subject, and, above all, an imagination which worked with great power upon the facts of his own experience. ↗

— Carl Clinton Van Doren

#actual #brought #curious #experience #facts

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. ↗

— David Eddings

#american literature #back #bad #bad back #by the time

Can you tell me what it means to waive your rights?" I hold my breath as Jacob hesitates. And then slowly, beautifully, the right fist he's been banging against the wooden railing unfurls and is raised over his head, moving back and forth like a metronome. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#legal #literal #beauty

A castaway adrift on my own little island - rich and with my family along with thousands of beautiful, drunken tourists to keep me company.” - excerpt from Confessions of an Internet Pornographer. ↗

— Luis Mario

#beauty

I took two fiction-writing courses in college and majored in literature. I felt that I had a knack though I wouldn't go so far as to call it a talent. But it scared me. I felt it was a childish thing wanting to write and that I would forget about it eventually. ↗

— Ben Fountain

#call #childish #college #courses #eventually

In our day the conventional element in literature is elaborately disguised by a law of copyright pretending that every work of art is an invention distinctive enough to be patented. ↗

— Northrop Frye

#conventional #copyright #day #disguised #distinctive

I've had a wordless phase, and that's still not entirely over: what I sing is not always literally meant that way, and you can hear that in the way it is sung. ↗

— Beth Gibbons

#entirely #had #hear #i #literally