#liter

Anybody who writes a book is an optimist. First of all, they think they're going to finish it. Second, they think somebody's going to publish it. Third, they think somebody's going to read it. Fourth, they think somebody's going to like it. How optimistic is that? ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#inspirational #instructional #literary #education

Jane Austen may not be the best writer, but she certainly writes about the best people. And by that I mean people just like me. ↗

— Anna Quindlen

#change

You might hear some ugly talk about it at school, but do one thing for me if you will: you just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat.Try fighting with your head for a change . . .it's a good one, even if it does resist learning. ↗

— Harper Lee

#classic #change

You may have tangible wealth untold; caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be. I had a mother who read to me. ↗

— Strickland Gillian

#literacy #love #mother #quote #reading

It's amazing how close I have been, all this time, to my old life. And yet the distance that divides me from it is vast. ↗

— Lauren Oliver

#life-and-living #life-lessons #literary-fiction #quotes #inspirational

Water, wind and birdsong were the echoes in this quiet place of a great chiming symphony that was surging around the world. Knee-deep in grasses and moon daisies, Stella stood and listened, swaying a little as the flowers and trees were swaying, her spirit voice singing loudly, though her lips were still, and every pulse in her body beating its hammer strokes in time to the song. ↗

— Elizabeth Goudge

#inspirational #literature #inspirational

The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility. ↗

— Anaïs Nin

#fear #freedom #hypocrisy #literature #perversion

The great subversive works of children's literature suggest that there are other views of human life besides those of the shopping mall and the corporation. They mock current assumptions and express the imaginative, unconventional, noncommercial view of the world in its simplest and purest form. They appeal to the imaginative, questioning, rebellious child within all of us, renew our instinctive energy, and act as a force for change. This is why such literature is worthy of our attention and will endure long after more conventional tales have been forgotten. ↗

— Alison Lurie

#change

We must wash literature off ourselves. We want to be men above all, to be human. ↗

— Antonin Artaud

#human #literature #men #must #off

A certain critic -- for such men, I regret to say, do exist -- made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained 'all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.' He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have out-generalled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy. ↗

— P.G. Wodehouse

#intelligence