#literature

I never wanted to become an actress because I'd read great literature or seen great Shakespeare. It was more just wanting to understand what the people were really like, why they said all the strange things they did. ↗

— Julie Walters

#because #become #did #great #great literature

The establishment, the newspapers, they try to create something called Scottish literature, but when people are actually going to write, they are not going to necessarily prescribe to that, they'll write what they feel. ↗

— Irvine Welsh

#called #create #establishment #feel #going

I am also well aware that literature only has a minimal influence on political disputes or economic crises in the world, but its significance to human beings is ancient. ↗

— Mo Yan

#am #ancient #aware #beings #crises

Marx was troubled by the question of why ancient Greek art retained an ‘eternal charm’, even though the social conditions which produced it had long passed; but how do we know that it will remain ‘eternally’ charming, since history has not yet ended? Let us imagine that by dint of some deft archaeological research we discovered a great deal more about what ancient Greek tragedy actually meant to its original audiences, recognized that these concerns were utterly remote from our own, and began to read the plays again in the light of this deepened knowledge. One result might be that we stopped enjoying them. We might come to see that we had enjoyed them previously because we were unwittingly reading them in the light of our own preoccupations; once this became less possible, the drama might cease to speak at all significantly to us. The fact that we always interpret literary works to some extent in the light of our own concerns - indeed that in one sense of ‘our own concerns’ we are incapable of doing anything else - might be one reason why certain works of literature seem to retain their value across the centuries. It may be, of course, that we still share many preoccupations with the work itself; but it may also be that people have not actually been valuing the ‘same’ work at all, even though they may think they have. ‘Our’ Homer is not identical with the Homer of the Middle Ages, nor ‘our’ Shakespeare with that of his contemporaries; it is rather that different historical periods have constructed a ‘different’ Homer and Shakespeare for their own purposes, and found in these texts elements to value or devalue, though not necessarily the same ones. All literary works, in other words, are ‘rewritten’, if only unconsciously, by the societies which read them; indeed there is no reading of a work which is not also a ‘re-writing’. No work, and no current evaluation of it, can simply be extended to new groups of people without being changed, perhaps almost unrecognizably, in the process; and this is one reason why what counts as literature is a notably unstable affair. ↗

— Terry Eagleton

#essence #human-nature #literature #value #age

Only sweet people with good virtues can go to fairyland. Those who treat others meanly and without respect can never go there. ↗

— Janaki Sooriyarachchi

#good-advice #inspiring #inspirational

She hated him, this man, and these men: the ones who picked her up without expression and used her without emotion. The ones who picked her up with no more regard than they had for picking lint off the collars of their well-pressed suits. She preferred the sweaty nervousness of young virgins or the eager speediness of excited old vets with their knobby fingers and waxy breath to these cold, hard men. These were the ones who called her squaw. Who called her half-breed, the ones who would just as soon slap her than bother to put on the condom she always handed them. She often wondered why they didn’t just keep the $80 it cost to be with her and drive their comfortable, bucket-seated SUVs home to the suburbs. They could kiss their wives hello and then slip into very hot showers to jerk off for free. Their peckish wives could spend the money they saved spending an afternoon getting the silk wraps and pedicures that would goad them into putting out anyways. To these men she had no name and no face. She was a hole. Consequently, she held no regard for these bastards. She gave them the calculated respect accorded to dangerous dogs. ↗

— Cherie Dimaline

#canadian-literature #cherie #dimaline #first-nations #theytus

Pay attention, and use your imagination. ↗

— R.M. Engelhardt

#on-writing #poetry #r-m-engelhardt #writing-life #imagination

Truth is hard-hearted and unrelenting, too clear, precise; a lie is much more imaginative. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#clear #dejan-stojanovic #hard-hearted #imagination #imaginative

Resta-nos esclarecer a parte que nesse golfo fantástico cabe ao imaginário indireto, ou seja, o conjunto de imagens que a cultura nos fornece, seja ela cultura de massa ou outra forma de tradição. Esta questão suscita de imediato uma outra: que futuro estará reservado à imaginação individual nessa que se convencionou chamar a "civilização da imagem"? O poder de evocar imagens [i]in absentia[/i] continuará a desenvolver-se numa humanidade cada vez mais inundada pelo dilúvio das imagens pré-fabricadas? Antigamente a memória visiva de um individuo estava limitada ao patrimônio de suas experiências diretas e a um reduzido repertório de imagens refletidas pela cultura; a possibilidade de dar forma a mitos pessoais nascia do modo pelo qual os fragmentos dessa memória se combinavam entre si em abordagens inesperadas e sugestivas. Hoje somos bombardeados por uma tal quantidade de imagens a ponto de não podermos distinguir mais a experiência direta daquilo que vimos há poucos segundos na televisão. Em nossa memória se depositam, por estratos sucessivos, mil estilhaços de imagens, semelhantes a um depósito de lixo, onde é cada vez menos provável que uma delas adquira relevo ↗

— Italo Calvino Six Memos for the Next Millennium

#imagination #literature #imagination

I'm planting a tree to teach me to gather strength from my deepest roots. ↗

— Andrea Koehle Jones

#children-s-books #children-s-literature #roots #strength-of-character #tree-of-life