#literature

We have no time to waste on insignificant books, hollow books, books that are there to please... We want books that cost their authors a great deal, books where you can feel the years of work, the backache, the writer's block, the author's panic at the thought that he might be lost: his discouragement, his courage, his anguish, his stubbornness, the risk of failure that he has taken. ↗

— Laurence Cossé

#literature #courage

Gormenghast. Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracts. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue of spires a zephyr floats; a bird whistles; a freshet beats away from a choked river. Deep in a fist of stone a doll's hand wriggles, warm rebellious on the frozen palm. A shadow shifts its length. A spider stirs... And darkness winds between the characters. - Gormenghast ↗

— Mervyn Peake

#classic #gormenghast #gothic #literature #art

An artist is the magician put among men to gratify--capriciously--their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships--and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes--husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer... ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#history #literature #art

Literature is the only art in which the audience performs the score. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#art

WE ARE the PULSE of the TIMES! ↗

— Carrie White

#biography #carrie-white #carrie-white-hairdresser #inspirational #literature

Why should literature be easy? Sometimes you can do what you want to do in a simple, direct way that is absolutely right. Sometimes you can't. Reading is not a passive act. Books are not TV. Art of all kinds is an interactive challenge. The person who makes the work and the person who comes to the work both have a job to do. I am never wilfully obscure, but I do ask for some effort. ↗

— Jeanette Winterson

#interaction #literature #reading #art

Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes. ↗

— E.M. Forster

#literature #writing #art

All literature and popular art contain themes that resonate with the audience. ↗

— Daniel Lambert

#literature #art

The only problem i had with literature that I simply couldn't figure out was that the correct answer was the first thing that comes to your mind after reading the question, the most obvious one. I can only blame math for that. ↗

— Blin Varfi

#exams #highschool #humor #irony #literature

Sang Ly, we are literature-our lives, our hopes, our desires, our despairs, our passions, our strengths, our weaknesses. Stories express our longing not only to make a difference today but to see what is possible for tomorrow. Literature has been called a handbook for the art of being human. ↗

— Camron Wright

#literature #stories #art