#literature

Sometimes he spend hours together in the great libraries of Paris, those catacombs of departed authors, rummaging among their hoards of dusty and obsolete works in quest of food for his unhealthy appetite. He was, in a manner, a literary ghoul, feeding in the charnel-house of decayed literature." From "The Adventure of the German Student ↗

— Washington Irving

#literature #reading #food

I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. My family was not nationally known as being a literary family, though my mother and my mother's side of the family in general were interested in literature. ↗

— Kenneth Koch

#born #cincinnati #family #general #i

I have to keep up with the scientific literature as part of my job, but increasingly I found myself reading things that weren't really relevant to my academic work, but were relevant to gardening. ↗

— Ken Thompson

#found #gardening #i #increasingly #job

I never wanted to become an actress because I'd read great literature or seen great Shakespeare. It was more just wanting to understand what the people were really like, why they said all the strange things they did. ↗

— Julie Walters

#because #become #did #great #great literature

Post-Modernism was a reaction against Modernism. It came quite early to music and literature, and a little later to architecture. And I think it's still coming to computer science. ↗

— Larry Wall

#architecture #came #coming #computer #computer science

The establishment, the newspapers, they try to create something called Scottish literature, but when people are actually going to write, they are not going to necessarily prescribe to that, they'll write what they feel. ↗

— Irvine Welsh

#called #create #establishment #feel #going

En la forest de Longue Attente chevauchant par divers sentiers m'en voys, ceste année présente où voyage de Desiriers. Devant sont aller mes fourriers pour appareiller mon logis en la Cité de Destinée. Et pout mon cœur et moy ont pris l'ostellerie de Pensée. Dedans mon livre de pensée j'ay trouvé escripvant mon cœur la vraie histoire de douleur de larmes toute enluminée. In het Woud van Lang Verwachten te paard op pad, dolenderwijs, zie ik mijzelf dit jaar bij machte tot Verlangens' verre reis. Mijn knechtstoet is vooruitgegaan om 't nachtverblijf vast te bereiden, vond in Bestemming's Stad gereed voor dit mijn hart, en mij ons beiden, de herberg, die Gedachte heet. In 't boek van mijn gepeinzen al vond ik dan, schrijvende, mijn hart; het waar verhaal van bitt're smart verlucht met tranen zonder tal. Charles d'Orléans ↗

— Hella S. Haasse

#french #french-poetry #medieval #medieval-literature #medieval-poetry

Marx was troubled by the question of why ancient Greek art retained an ‘eternal charm’, even though the social conditions which produced it had long passed; but how do we know that it will remain ‘eternally’ charming, since history has not yet ended? Let us imagine that by dint of some deft archaeological research we discovered a great deal more about what ancient Greek tragedy actually meant to its original audiences, recognized that these concerns were utterly remote from our own, and began to read the plays again in the light of this deepened knowledge. One result might be that we stopped enjoying them. We might come to see that we had enjoyed them previously because we were unwittingly reading them in the light of our own preoccupations; once this became less possible, the drama might cease to speak at all significantly to us. The fact that we always interpret literary works to some extent in the light of our own concerns - indeed that in one sense of ‘our own concerns’ we are incapable of doing anything else - might be one reason why certain works of literature seem to retain their value across the centuries. It may be, of course, that we still share many preoccupations with the work itself; but it may also be that people have not actually been valuing the ‘same’ work at all, even though they may think they have. ‘Our’ Homer is not identical with the Homer of the Middle Ages, nor ‘our’ Shakespeare with that of his contemporaries; it is rather that different historical periods have constructed a ‘different’ Homer and Shakespeare for their own purposes, and found in these texts elements to value or devalue, though not necessarily the same ones. All literary works, in other words, are ‘rewritten’, if only unconsciously, by the societies which read them; indeed there is no reading of a work which is not also a ‘re-writing’. No work, and no current evaluation of it, can simply be extended to new groups of people without being changed, perhaps almost unrecognizably, in the process; and this is one reason why what counts as literature is a notably unstable affair. ↗

— Terry Eagleton

#essence #human-nature #literature #value #age

Because I don't have to be careful of people's feelings when I teach literature, and I do when I'm teaching writing. ↗

— Tobias Wolff

#because #careful #feelings #i #i do

Kiss me hot,heavy,wet & angry with that attitude like you do when your mouth yells it hates me but your tongue screams it can’t wait for me. Hug me, touch me, submit to me with that insatiable passion like you do when you thought you could leave but the sight of my throbbing rock hard love muscle made you too weak in the knees. Your mind is melting fast, your soul is whispering trust, your eyes are begging please and your anger has turned to lust. Let me undress your body, caress your skin and wetly massage your mind back into making love to me again. I’d rather say I’m sorry and keep my best friend than have this come to an end. Be encouraged but more importantly…be lethal with your make up love. ↗

— Kerry E. Wagner

#book-clubs #books #erotic-literature #erotica-romance #love