“I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.”
“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”
“Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.”
“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”
“Puns are the highest form of literature.”
“Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.”
“After all, tomorrow is another day!”
“It s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.”
“That s what literature is. It s the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them!”
“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”
“It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.”
“When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...].”
“Every man s memory is his private literature.”
“About here, she thought, dabbling her fingers in the water, a ship had sunk, and she muttered, dreamily half asleep, how we perished, each alone.”
“Mother used to say that however miserable one is, there’s always something to be thankful for. And each morning, when the sky brightened and light began to flood my cell, I agreed with her.”
“Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.”