Literary Quotes Quotes & Sayings

We lie on the blanket, our bare bodies basking in the sun like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Only our apples were bitten a long time ago, and we ate them too. — Henry Martin

Inez and I had been in the same book club for a while. She once told me that literary theory was reading without imagination, and I've loved her ever since. — John Dufresne

Fiction should be in its way subversive. I don't think books should be neat or gentle or genteel or comforting. I think they should be raw. They should be written as perfectly as possible, but what they do is to stir up, to lance the reader. — Edna O'Brien

His eyesight wasn't as keen as it had been, but he knew a changing mind when he saw it. — Bebe Moore Campbell

The author is impacted by a hidden insistence that takes the shape of different combinations each time a
different text is produced but the underlying problem remains the same for him. — Anuradha Bhattacharyya

I don't know any writers who don't drink. — James Baldwin

That is one thing I am sure of amid my many uncertainties regarding the literary vocation: deep inside, a writer feels that writing is the best thing that ever happened to him, or could ever happen to him, because as far as he is concerned, writing is the best possible way of life, never mind the social, political, or financial rewards of what he might achieve through it. — Mario Vargas-Llosa

There comes a hush between darkness and day.
Like expectation of a caress.
A murmur of silence.
Tree crests peeked down at Paulette through slowly lifting fog. Bark felt around for its texture again. Morning gathered and drifted through mere hints; through vague hopeful nuances of 'Just maybe'.
- From "The Gardens of Ailana" handbook for healers & mystics — Edward Fahey

He takes a draw on a cigarette, blows out a smoky ghost. I reach to catch the phantom in my hands, but it eludes me. I've been trying to catch a ghost for as long as I can remember. — Brenda Sutton Rose

Who knows, maybe one day there will no longer be Literature. Instead there will be literary web sites. Like those stars, still shining but long dead, the web sites will testify to the existence of past writers. There will be quotes, fragments of texts, which prove that there used to be complete texts once. Instead of readers there will be cyber space travelers who will stumble upon the websites by chance and stop for a moment to gaze at them. How they will read them? Like hieroglyphs? As we read the instructions for a dishwasher today? Or like remnants of a strange communication that meant something in the past, and was called Literature? — Dubravka Ugresic

The Bishop blessed him and helped him to his feet.
"May God have mercy on you," he said. And erased him from his heart. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Told shone brightly. They truly stood out among the Inhabitants for their life and love, and the power to rebrand words went with them. They employed every type of literary term to form new passages of powerful change, and they rose above the tendency to write about the mundane or the antics of the Untold. — K.A. Gunn

It is not that the girl is unfit for everything, it is that she is not of this world. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Literature has become merely a tool for culture studies. — Anuradha Bhattacharyya

It's amazing how close I have been, all this time, to my old life. And yet the distance that divides me from it is vast. — Lauren Oliver

For a moment Carl tried to picture everything in his mind, and then it happened. Somewhere inside of him, where cause and effect were not weighted against each other, and where logic and explanations never challenged consciousness, in that place where thoughts could live freely and played out against each other - right there in that spot, things fell into place, and he understood how it all fitted together — Jussi Adler-Olsen

Someone who dreams cannot be forced to stop - there are no limitations to dreams, because we do not own dreams, dreams are from God. — Christina Westover

All good writers are thieves. The best get away with a heist. — Michael Stutz

The way contemporary literature is emerging, soon we can expect "Item poetry" in novels. — Himmilicious

A love letter can be very short or it can be long; it can be literary or non-literary; it can be bright or dark, cheerful or tragic. But above all, for a love letter to be a love letter it must be sincere! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I believe the visionaries and true reflections of society will be rewarded after their lives. Those being rewarded now are giving the public what it needs now, usually applauding its current state and clearing consciences. — Hollace M. Metzger

The wind whirls and whistles and strip pink blooms from the mimosas, scatters twigs, broken limbs, pine needles and pine cones across our yard, and robs the pecan trees of a thousand leaves. The storm eventually dies, but the bruised trees continue to weep into the night, still shimmering with dewy leaves when the sun comes up the next morning. — Brenda Sutton Rose

ONCE WHEN I WAS ninth grade i had to write a paper on a poem. One of the lines wasIf your eyes weren't open you wouldn't know the difference between dreaming and waking' It hadn't meant meant much to me at the time. After all there'd been a guy in the class that i liked so how could i be expected to pay attention to literary analysis? Now three year later i understand the poem perfectly. — Richelle Mead

It occurred to me that I could use the energy I had been putting into endurance to change my life. Yet the concept of brunt, of accepting and enduring, still seems to me to have a kind of nobility. It is, perhaps, less intelligent, but there is a stubborn selfhood about it that is dear to me. It can be, quite literally, the only way to survive. — Anne Truitt

A castaway adrift on my own little island - rich and with my family along with thousands of beautiful, drunken tourists to keep me company." - excerpt from Confessions of an Internet Pornographer. — Luis Mario

Hone your writing skills as if they were your finest weapons of war. For in the literary arena, your pen will truly be your sword. — Max Hawthorne

Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third. — T. S. Eliot

What I like most about the process of literary creation is gathering mundane facts and concepts, then clothing them with the ornate jewels and fine garments of imagination and fantasy, weaving a tale on the glittering edge of possibility. — Gregory Hamilton

A transcription doesn't so much repeat words as contextualize and historicize them, uniting them with the time, place, and source of their utterance. A transcript reproduces the words it records; it does not use them. Quoting is an attitude and practice, central to aesthetic and literary experiences as different from each other as the sublime and camp. — William Flesch

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten. — Chinua Achebe

She was so afraid of everything that she made it impossible to really enjoy anything at all. — Lemony Snicket

All I want is to sleep
to dream. Life is better in dreams. — Christina Westover

Darkness crept through. Shadows pried at doors, teased dull edges of recollections that never quite took hold. Memories that would have shriveled under the blinding sun of daylight. And reason. — Edward Fahey

She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sources. I like that in a woman. — David Mitchell

No, Ben. What I'm asking is: Are you the vehicle, and Georgie rides around in you? That is why Ben's the driver, right? — Jonathan Harnisch

Punctuation was, it is sad to say, invented a very long time ago. Even more frustrating, it has remained with us ever since. — Anne Elizabeth Moore

When it comes to overcoming writing hurdles, getting sick is like suffering a review from a critic with an axe to grind; you can't let it get you down! — Max Hawthorne

Delayed gratification hints that something terrible is going to happen, and then delays the resolution.

It's that interval between the promise of something awful and it actually happening, where suspense resides. — Sandy Vaile

We all act as independent learners in charge of designing our autodidactic curricula. Reading the books written by the prophetic genius of history including the literary masterpieces and philosophical treatises awakens the mind. Reading can act as a gateway drug leading to writing and expansion of a personal state of conscious awareness. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I don't care if the streets of Heaven are gold or not as long as they're clean and I don't have to sweep them. — John Northcutt Young

Suspense doesn't always have to be about physical danger. Making the reader worry is a universal concept that can be applied to any story. — Sandy Vaile