#literature

He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on. ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#hemingway #dreams

A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle... ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#nabokov #quote #reader #reading #brain

Sound unbound by nature becomes bounded by art. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#books #dejan-stojanovic #literature #literature-quotes #nature

I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#literature

Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye? I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here. ↗

— Chaim Potok

#life

Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? ↗

— Italo Calvino

#experience

In my profession it isn’t a question of telling good literature from bad. Really good literature is seldom appreciated in its own day. The best authors die poor, the bad ones make money — it’s always been like that. What do I, an agent, get out of a literary genius who won’t be discovered for another hundred years? I’ll be dead myself then. Successful incompetents are what I need. ↗

— Walter Moers

#writers #writing #dreams

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness. ↗

— Edith Wharton

#conformity

To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#historians #literature #description

High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water. ↗

— Mark Twain

#water #wine #wine