Anti Literary Quotes & Sayings

Politics means facing up to hard choices and facing down prejudice, short-termism, the easy, tempting court of knee-jerk public reaction. — Charles Kennedy

George Orwell's '1984' frequently tops surveys of our greatest books: it's not a celebration of poetic language. It's decidedly anti-literary, a masterpiece of personal and political narrative sequence. And its subject matter is crucial, because what '1984' shows is that language can be a dirty trick. — Graham Joyce

Fusion power is speculative and experimental. I think it is reckless to assume that the fusion problem will be cracked, but I'm happy to estimate how much power fusion could deliver, if the problems are cracked. — David J. C. MacKay

People were growing resentful of bureaucrats whose first mission in life seemed to be protecting their own jobs by keeping expensive programs alive long after their usefulness had expired. They were losing respect for politicians who kept voting for open-ended welfare programs riddled with fraud and inefficiency that kept generation after generation of families dependent on the dole. And they were growing mistrustful of the self-appointed intellectual elite back in Washington who claimed to know better than the people of America did how to run their lives, their businesses, and their communities. — Ronald Reagan

I want to make sure I continue to make good music that my mom and everybody around me can be proud of. — Ruben Studdard

You cannot contract to sell a baby. If they legalize this contract they may soon start bringing poor women in from other countries just to be breeders. — Mary Beth Whitehead

I can see the singles ad now: 'Three straight men, a gay man and a woman trapped in one body, seeks a lady willing to share her lipstick and shoes. A perfect match must enjoy cleaning automatic weapons, dividing anti-psychotic drugs into a weekly pill keeper, and long walks on the beach.' The calls would just pour in. — Autumn Rosen

An important dimension of Tess of the d'Urbervilles is its debt to the oral tradition; to stories about wronged milkmaids, tales of superstition, and stories of love, betrayal and revenge, involving stock figures. This gives Tess of the d'Urbervilles an anti-realistic inflection. From the world of ballad and folktale Hardy draws such fateful coincidences as the failure of Angel to encounter Tess at the 'Club-walking' on which he intrudes with his brothers, the letter to Angel that she accidentally slips under the carpet, the loss of her shoes when she tries to visit his family, and the family portraits on the wall of their honeymoon dwelling, as well as several omens. This chimes effectively with a world in which the rural folk have a superstitious and fatalistic attitude to life. — Geoffrey Harvey

I learned that it's okay to feel the way I do: that my life has no meaning unless I have a boyfriend. A real man is like the perfect vampire-boy and all the perfect guys in Twue Wuv. — Jess C. Scott

The first phase of modernism, which so far as the English language goes we associate with Pound and Yeats, Wyndham Lewis and Eliot and Joyce, was clerkly enough, sceptical in many ways; and yet we can without difficulty convict most of these authors of dangerous lapses into mythical thinking. All were men of critical temper, haters of the decadence of the times and the myths of mauvaise foi. All, in different ways, venerated tradition and had programmes which were at once modern and anti-schismatic. This critical temper was admittedly made to seem consistent with a strong feeling for renovation; the mood was eschatological, but scepticism and a refined traditionalism held in check what threatened to be a bad case of literary primitivism. It was elsewhere that the myths ran riot. — Frank Kermode

What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do? — Ralph Ellison

Moral good is a practical stimulus; it is no sooner seen than it inspires an impulse to practice. — Plutarch

The worst feature of the Common Core is its anti-humanistic, utilitarian approach to education. It mistakes what a child is and what a human being is for. That is why it has no use for poetry, and why it boils the study of literature down to the scrambling up of some marketable "skill" [ ... ] you don't read good books to learn about what literary artists do ... you learn about literary art so that you can read more good books and learn more from them. It is as if Thomas Gradgrind had gotten hold of the humanities and turned them into factory robotics. — Anthony Esolen

Everybody should read fiction ... I don't think serious fiction is written for a few people. I think we live in a stupid culture that won't educate its people to read these things. It would be a much more interesting place if it would. And it's not just that mechanics and plumbers don't read literary fiction, it's that doctors and lawyers don't read literary fiction. It has nothing to do with class, it has to do with an anti-intellectual culture that doesn't trust art. — Percival Everett

It's way too early for him to be talking anyhow but I see in his eyes something and I see in his eyes a voice and I see in his eyes a whole new set of words — Sherman Alexie

Harvard just took that option out of our hands. He is truly on his own now. — Lara Adrian

The Bible never mentions Christianity. It does not preach Christianity, nor does it encourage us to preach Christianity. Paul did not preach Christianity, nor did any of the other apostles. During centuries when the Church was strong and vibrant, she did not preach Christianity either. Christianity, like Judaism and "Yahwism", is an invention of biblical scholars, theologians, and politicians, and one of its chief effects is to keep Christians and the Church in their proper marginal place. The Bible speaks of Christians and of the Church, but Christianity is gnostic, and the Church firmly rejected gnosticism from her earliest days. — Peter J. Leithart

Your cousin Maureen just got a job at the button factory. They're probably still hiring.
Helen Plum — Janet Evanovich

But now I want to say things that comfort me and that are a little free. For example: Thursdat is a day transparent as an insect's wing in the light. Just as Monday is a compact day. Ultimately, far beyond thought, I live from these ideas, if ideas is what they are. They are sensations that transform into ideas because I must use words. Even just using them mentally. The primary thought thinks with words. — Clarice Lispector

I guess in my beer-soaked mind it would all just magically work out, and she'd be so happy to see me she'd forget about everything else. Because everybody loves having the drunken self-pitying boyfriend banging on their door at, Jesus, four thirty in the morning. — Rachel Caine

Plot these days is anti-intellectual and verboten, the mark of the Philistine, the huckster with a pen. There mustn't be too much story and that should be fog-bound and shrouded in heavy symbolism, including the phallic, like a sort of covoluted charade. Symbolism now carries the day, it's the one true ladder of literary heaven. — Robert Traver