Literature Quotes

"You can take anything you like from poetry."

"A poet's concern is not with setting the record straight."

"The test of literature is whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it."

"Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment."

"I'm always leaving one chapter to tell in another book."

"I have never written on any subject unless I believed that the subject was worth the wear and tear on the English language."

"The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really quite good."

"The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink."

"Someone said: the dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did."

"The greatness of literature is not always apparent at first reading."

"The power of words is that they can resurrect the dead."

"The writer must always try to catch something true, the spirit of things and people that makes them what they are."

"I am a story-teller. That is all I am. I want to tell stories."

"The modern writer cannot rely on tradition. He must make his own tradition."

"The writer's task is to hold up a mirror to humanity."

"Every person carries stories worth telling."

"The writer's greatest tool is honest observation."

"Poetry must be as well written as prose."

"Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree."

"The test of literature is its power of association."

"Good writers are those who keep the language efficient."

"I would rather sleep with Sappho and with Catullus than with the printed Swinburne."

"News that stays news is the definition of literature."

"Poetry must interest the man in the street."

"The classics are only primitive literature."

"The function of literature is to be a mirror of the human soul."

"The aim of literature is the aim of science."

"The essence of good writing is clarity."

"Literature preserves the soul of humanity across generations."

"I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."