#liter

The great break of my literary career was going to law school. ↗

— Scott Turow

#career #going #great #law #law school

My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure. ↗

— Gene Wolfe

#education

The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot. ↗

— Audre Lorde

#learning #learning process #like #literally #process

Basically, if the author is totally un-educated, then the text won't bring out his best. Normal, educated people always understand that. But here's the thing—when the author is very highly-educated, the result is the same: the text turns out sub-par. Like if Charybdis was an uneducated cannibal, and Scylla was a sophisticated gourmand. Real literature snakes between the two. Like Hera's hair. ↗

— Elizaveta Mikhailichenko Yury Nesis

#literature #education

She remembers this phrase from his final months of law school, when he brought home the books on starting up a business. He'd read ravenously for several weeks and then predicted: "Well, darling, we're going to be rich." Now he slaps shut the last of his books and announces, with equal assurance: "We're all going to die. ↗

— Jacob Appel

#mystery #business

Plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages. Many things I read surpassed my understanding and experience. I had a very confused knowledge of kingdoms, wide extents of country, mighty rivers, and boundless seas. This book developed new and mightier scenes of action. I read of men concerned in public affairs, governing or massacring their species. I felt the greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice. ↗

— Mary Shelley

#literature #plutarch #age

All hen are created equal but some have more feather than others. ↗

— Viken Berberian

#humor #literature #equality

Absolute equals nothingness. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #equals #literature #literature-quotes #nothingness

I searched modern fiction and poetry for clues to how we confronted and evaded reality, how we articulated our experience and turned to language not to revel ourselves but to hide. I was as sure then as I am now that by looking at contemporary Iranian fiction I could gain access to a real understanding of political and social events. (p289) ↗

— Azar Nafisi

#how-fiction-informs-reality #purpose #experience

But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. ↗

— Marcel Proust

#literature #memory #proust #faith