#literature

It appeared that the swift wings of their desires would have shattered against the iron gates of the impossible. ↗

— Stephen Crane

#courage

More than art, more than literature, music is universally accessible. ↗

— Billy Joel

#art #literature #more #music #than

Internationalism on the other hand admits that spiritual achievements have their roots deep in national life; from this national consciousness art and literature derive their character and strength and on it even many of the humanistic sciences are firmly based. ↗

— Christian Lous Lange

#art #based #character #consciousness #deep

The Arab world also won the Nobel with me. I believe that international doors have opened, and that from now on, literate people will consider Arab literature also. We deserve that recognition. ↗

— Naguib Mahfouz

#arab #arab world #believe #consider #deserve

The Nobel Prize has given me, for the first time in my life, the feeling that my literature could be appreciated on an international level. ↗

— Naguib Mahfouz

#could #feeling #first #first time #given

To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is. ↗

— David McCullough

#art #being #civic #enlargement #experience

Literature gives us a window into other people's experiences in other places, in other times, so I thought it would be really interesting to investigate how different people had written about motherhood, and childhood. ↗

— Natalie Merchant

#childhood #different #different people #experiences #gives

Although there is a very large literature, still growing almost daily, on the Chinese calendar, its interest is, we suggest, much more archaeological and historical than scientific. ↗

— Joseph Needham

#although #archaeological #calendar #chinese #daily

In my early teens, I heard about Naked Lunch and its mutating typewriters and talking cockroaches. While I would hardly classify its dystopic vision as erotica now, at the time, Naked Lunch was my first foray into consuming smut. It was because of Burroughs that I knew about the particular musk that blooms when a rectum is penetrated, and that death-by-hanging produces spontaneous trouser tents. The first Burroughs I read was Naked Lunch, but I buried myself in a few of his stories, and thus the arc of my recollection is just as non-linear as his narrative. ↗

— Peter Dubé

#coming-of-age #erotica #homosexuality #literature #queer

The best thing to do is to loosen my grip on my pen and let it go wandering about until it finds an entrance. There must be one – everything depends on the circumstances, a rule applicable as much to literary style as to life. Each word tugs another one along, one idea another, and that is how books, governments and revolutions are made – some even say that is how Nature created her species. ↗

— Machado de Assis

#creativity #literature #novels #writers #writing