#literature

The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary. ↗

— Italo Calvino

#inadequacy-of-words #language #literature #writing #literature

People don't expect too much from literature. They just want to know they're not alone with being confused. ↗

— Jonathan Ames

#literature #reading #literature

So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day. ↗

— Zora Neale Hurston

#women #literature

No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature. ↗

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

#literature #literature

Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#literature

You'll never be alone if you’ve got a book. ↗

— Al Pacino

#literature #reading #literature

Lord Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. Lord Polonius: What is the matter, my lord? Hamlet: Between who? Lord Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#literature #shakespeare #literature

Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as when The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, Her ashes new-create another heir As great in admiration as herself. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#drama #english-literature #drama

In my profession it isn’t a question of telling good literature from bad. Really good literature is seldom appreciated in its own day. The best authors die poor, the bad ones make money — it’s always been like that. What do I, an agent, get out of a literary genius who won’t be discovered for another hundred years? I’ll be dead myself then. Successful incompetents are what I need. ↗

— Walter Moers

#writers #writing #dreams

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness. ↗

— Edith Wharton

#conformity