...Quotes on Reading, Writing @ Literature...

LelaRentaka7

“I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.”
― Isaac Asimov

LelaRentaka7

“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.”
― Dylan Thomas

LelaRentaka7

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
― Thomas Jefferson

LelaRentaka7

“All I need is a sheet of paper
and something to write with, and then
I can turn the world upside down.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

LelaRentaka7

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”
― William Faulkner

seribulan

“The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall; nations perish; civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead.” — Clarence Shepard Day

LelaRentaka7

“A book is a suicide postponed.”
― Emil M. Cioran

LelaRentaka7

“The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.”
― Voltaire

LelaRentaka7

“Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.”
― Alice Walker

LelaRentaka7

“A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.”
― Sidney Sheldon

LelaRentaka7

“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”
― Franz Kafka

LelaRentaka7

“The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.”
― Ernest Hemingway

LelaRentaka7

“You can fix anything but a blank page.”
― Nora Roberts

LelaRentaka7

“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”
― Ray Bradbury

LelaRentaka7

“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”
― Kurt Vonnegut

seribulan

bianglala

"We do literature a real disservice if we reduce it to knowledge or to use, to a problem to be solved. If literature solves problems, it does so by its own inexhaustibility, and by its ultimate refusal to be applied or used, even for moral good. This refusal, indeed, is literature's most moral act. At a time when meanings are manifold, disparate, and always changing, the rich possibility of interpretation--the happy resistance of the text to ever be fully known and mastered--is one of the most exhilarating products of human culture."

- Marjorie Garber -

bianglala

"Some scholars of literature claim that a book is really that virtual place your mind goes to when you are reading. It is a conceptual state of imagination that one might call “literature space.” According to these scholars, when you are engaged in this reading space, your brain works differently than when you are screening. Neurological studies show that learning to read changes the brain’s circuitry. Instead of skipping around distractedly gathering bits, when you read you are transported, focused, immersed."

- Kevin Kelly (The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future) -

bianglala

"Who says great literatue has to be written by men? Who says great literature has to be about scary, creepy stuff like adulterers being punished and black slaves breaking loose and giant whales eating people? Why can't literature just be stories about women? Refined, respectable women have just as much to say as ignorant black slaves or bloodthirsty Indians or mad white whaling captains. Why do we have to pretend those people's lives matter more than our own?"

- Anna Quindlen (Pride and Prejudice) -

bianglala

"I think we all look for clues that we are not utterly alone... Clues we find in literature and paintings and music and even someone’s eyes; clues that demonstrate that someone else has felt the same indescribable feelings, seen the same things or passed by the spot even if it was by candlelight three hundred years ago. It means everything, like finding footprints in the sand of a deserted island."

- Jonathan Hull (Losing Julia) -