#liter

I am about tribal feminine power. As a leader, I may stumble but my essence lives to the future-- of my people, of my literature, of my art. And when a tribesman turn against its leader, that tribe will become two. It may faulter my course, but it will not stifle my ending. I rule only among my believers. ↗

— Kristie LeVangie

#belief #essence #faith #family #feminine

She'd become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she loved to read. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#majors #reading-books #love

Needs are stronger than liking. ↗

— Ravindra Shukla

#philosphy #youth #life

Chorus of old men: How true the saying: 'Tis impossible to live with the baggages, impossible to live without 'em. ↗

— Aristophanes

#greek-literature #love #marriage #marriage-humor #love

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

#men

The architect represents neither a Dionysian nor an Apollinian condition: here it is the mighty act of will, the will which moves mountains, the intoxication of the strong will, which demands artistic expression. The most powerful men have always inspired the architects; the architect has always been influenced by power. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#inspirational

This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum. ↗

— Elbert Hubbard

#illiteracy #reading #money

What does literature do better than anything else? It provides a detailed representation of the inner experience of being alive in a given time and place. ↗

— Elif Batuman

#neuro-lit-crit #theory #experience

The pale organisms of literary heroes feeding under the author's supervision swell gradually with the reader's lifeblood; so that the genius of a writer consists in giving them the faculty to adapt themselves to that - not very appetizing - food and thrive on it, sometimes for centuries. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#reader #writer #writing #food

Genuine bravery for a writer.... It is about calmly speaking the truth when everyone else is silenced, when the truth cannot be expressed. It is about speaking out with a different voice, risking the wrath of the state and offending everyone, for the sake of the truth, and the writer’s conscience. ↗

— Murong Xuecun

#literature #freedom