#liter

It must inquire not merely about the circumstances of the time in general, but in particular about the writer's position with regard to these things, the interests and motives, the leading ideas of his literary activity. ↗

— Ferdinand Christian Baur

#activity #circumstances #general #his #ideas

The greater the conceptual significance of a literary product, the more it should be assumed that it is based on an idea that determines the whole, and that the deeper consciousness of the time to which it belongs is reflected in it. ↗

— Ferdinand Christian Baur

#based #belongs #conceptual #consciousness #deeper

I wasn't a visionary but I literally had my finger on the pulse of the women of America. ↗

— Pat Benatar

#finger #had #i #literally #pulse

[P]eople need to use their intelligence to evaluate what they find to be true and untrue in the Bible. This is how we need to live life generally. Everything we hear and see we need to evaluate—whether the inspiring writings of the Bible or the inspiring writings of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, or George Eliot, of Ghandi, Desmond Tutu, or the Dalai Lama. ↗

— Bart D. Ehrman

#intelligence #life #literature #religion #inspirational

Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth century novel. There were going to be people in it. Something was going to happen to them in a place resembling the world. Then too there were lots of weddings in Wharton and Austen. There were all kinds of irresistible gloomy men. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#literary-criticism #literary-theory #narrative #nineteenth-century #novels

There is some relationship between the hunger for truth and the search for the right words. This struggle may be ultimately indefinable and even undecidable, but one damn well knows it when one sees it. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#language #literary-criticism #literature #truth #literary-criticism

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it. Groucho Marx ↗

— Timar

#literary-criticism #literary-criticism

Analogies are like lies. ↗

— Roman Payne

#lies #literary-criticism #literary-criticism

Do not start me on The Da Vinci Code ... a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name." (Discussion at Woodruff Auditorium in Lawrence, KS; October 7, 2005.) ↗

— Salman Rushdie

#literary-criticism #novels #the-davinci-code #writing #literary-criticism

In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#literature #literary-criticism