Literary Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Literary

Literary Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Literary quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

The material of literary talent is words; the material of story talent is life itself. — Robert McKee

Can I help it if the world cannot worship what it has not first martyred? — Casper Silk

When a literary person's exhaustive work is over, the last thing he wishes to do is to talk books. — Fanny Fern

If contemporary literary fiction doesn't read a bit like science fiction then it's probably not all that contemporary, is it — Warren Ellis

Perhaps the greatest lesson which the lives of literary men teach us is told in a single word* Wait! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Literary critics make natural detectives. — A.S. Byatt

Verbose is not a synonym for literary. — Constance Hale

You have to make choices even when there is nothing to choose from. — Peter Zilahy

It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade. — William S. Burroughs

I have always moved by intuition alone. I have no system, literary or political. I have no guiding political idea. — V.S. Naipaul

I have always loved reading, so was interested in the literary world, and took many literary portraits. — Fay Godwin

Cracking the Ice scores the literary equivalent of a hat-trick: funny, harrowing and finally, heartfelt. This book is a winner. — Gregory Neri

I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer isn't aware of. — Umberto Eco

Your page stands against you and says to you that you are a thief. — Marcus Valerius Martialis

In ancient Ireland the soul had but to stretch out its arms to fill them with beauty. Now all manner of ugliness besets the world. — Orna Ross

The poem is the literary form of the 21st century. It's able to connect young people in a deep way to language ... it's language as play. — Carol Ann Duffy

In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself. — John Steinbeck

I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary; we did not have any books in the house. — Amy Tan

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life — John Cheever

Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. — C.S. Lewis

A smile is just the contortion of a face — Matthew Selwyn

Every single day I have missed you. I grieve for the moments we have had together and I long for the moments we will never have. — Kristin Maddock

The Banff Mountain [Book] Festival attracts this huge number of travel writers. Whereas when I go to literary festivals ... — John Gimlette

I would argue that stupidity is born out of bad reading, bad teaching and bad thinking! — John Green

Reading is for pleasure; it's not another form of social competition. Leave those literary Joneses to it. — Heather Reyes

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. — Anais Nin

For if anything is capable of making a poet of a literary man, it is my hometown love of the human, the living and ordinary. — Joseph Campbell

Indignation at literary wrongs I leave to men born under happier stars. I cannot afford it. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

As for Thea, sometimes she looked more barbarous than they did in spite of the civilized lipstick and conventional shape of the jodhpurs she wore. — Saul Bellow

A Literary Society is the most proper form for the introduction of our Order into any state where we are yet strangers. — Adam Weishaupt

What surer sign is there that the creative aquifers are dry than a writer creating a writer-character? — David Mitchell

War's all either country knows, and everything seems to depend on it now. — Samuel Snoek-Brown

And what is gossip anyway?Just fragments of sad accounts, maneuvered and mutilated year after year for our sinful pleasure. — Kanza Javed

Three Rules for Literary Success: 1. Read a lot.
2. Write a lot. 3. Read a lot more, write a lot more. — Robert Silverberg

George Orwell is a pinnacle writer, for his combination of moral insight and literary writing. — Atul Gawande

'Cerebus' is my attempt at a literary work. — Dave Sim

A linguist deaf to the poetic functions of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistics are equally flagrant anachronisms. — Roman Jakobson

It is a lie to write in such way as to be rewarded by fame offered you by some snobbish quasi-literary groups in the intellectual gazettes. — Ray Bradbury

I often pray, though I'm not really sure Anyone's listening; and I phrase it carefully, just in case He's literary. — Mignon McLaughlin

Punctuation was, it is sad to say, invented a very long time ago. Even more frustrating, it has remained with us ever since. — Anne Elizabeth Moore

I divide all literary works into two categories: Those I like and those I don't like. No other criterion exists for me. — Anton Chekhov

Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever. — Theodore Sturgeon

A literary critic is someone who can't write, but who loves to show he would have been a wonderful writer if only he could! — Brian Lumley

I'm working when I'm fighting with my wife. I constantly ask myself-how can I use this stuff to literary advantage. — Art Buchwald

One of the reasons I like Barthes more than other writers of that ilk is because he had a literary quality. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Would it be anything like a literary disaster if Gore Vidal were to fall silent? Easy. No. In fact, there is something to be said for the idea. — Lance Morrow

"Little magazines" are, for the most part, the mayflies of the literary world. — Frederick Crews

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die. — Voltaire

I'm not that well-versed in literary theory - I don't know what it is. — Jim Crace

He nodded, looking across the room at the sea of photographers and journalists. The microphones spread around him like birds waiting to be fed. — F.C. Malby

An essay is a work of literary art which has a minimum of one anecdote and one universal idea. — Carol Bly

I found, moreover, that there was no great literary tradition; there was only the tradition of the eventful death of every literary tradition ... . — F Scott Fitzgerald

Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge. — H.G.Wells

Don't read with your eyes. — Thomas C. Foster

I can usually find my own way out of whatever dicey literary or linguistic situations I wander into, but I have to work much harder at the science. — Kathryn Schulz

Whether early or late, the Parker novels are all superlative literary entertainments. — Terry Teachout

I might have simply settled down into an armchair literary life. I really don't know exactly why I didn't. — Edward Carpenter

A literary agent is nothing but a cheap salesman (or woman); while a writer is a cheap salesman (or woman) who also has to actually write the books. — John Hodgman

The point of literary criticism in anthropology is not to replace research, but to find out how it is that we are persuasive. — Clifford Geertz

You have to remember that in addition to running a literary agency, I am also an ebook publisher. — Richard Curtis

My literary success meant nothing to me. — Taylor Caldwell

The essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything. — Aldous Huxley

At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy. — Harold Bloom

If you tell me bad things about someone, you're telling bad things about me behind me — Miguel El Portugues

Something is missing in our culture. We can't quite celebrate the scientific literary tradition. — Ian McEwan

Hinde Esther Kreitman is a forgotten literary foremother, her works largely lost, ignored and out of print. — Clive Sinclair

I'm sold as a literary writer in Holland; I'm sold as crime fiction in England. I think of it as just literature. — Karin Slaughter

I'm afraid your literary prizes don't give you any jurisdiction in this particular instance, sir. — Lizzie K. Foley

Hatred is unattractive, but it's also irresistible. If men were honest with themselves, they'd admit it's a stronger passion than lust. — Norman Lock

The worldview implied by literary fiction is complex and ambiguous, trying to be faithful to the complexity and ambiguity of life. — Nancy Kress

No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter. — P.D. James

The greatest calling of all is to have a literary life. — Lisa See

I did try very hard to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts. — George Orwell

She kissed him first, and all the rest followed. — Alice Hoffman

Apparently, faith in life is one thing and faith in literature is another. — Gerald Weaver

Suggestion is a literary strategy. — Samuel R. Delany

I approach poetry and spirituality like literary nitroglycerin
a little can do a lot and you better damn well be careful with it. — Craig Johnson

I thought I would write non-fiction. I thought I would enter the New York literary scene as copy editor, work my way up, and then write my own books. — Michael Gruber

My English is closer to the literary English, and I'm not very familiar with jokes in English or with, you know, with small talk in English. — J.M.G. Le Clezio

The modern essay has regained a good deal of its literary status in our time, much to the credit of Joseph Epstein. — Karl Shapiro

Storytelling is as natural as breathing; plotting is the literary version of artificial respiration. — Stephen King

I don't think that my films are 'literary'; they are based on the most ordinary things of life. — Eric Rohmer

A few hints as to literary craftsmanship may be useful to budding historians. First and foremost, get writing! — Samuel Eliot Morison

I say quotations are literary. They are good only when dealing with ideas, not with experience. Experience should be pure, unique. — Anais Nin

Literature is like phosphorus: it shines with its maximum brilliance and the moment when it attempts to die. — Roland Barthes

You cannot predict literary success; the only way you can possibly aim for it is to do your thing and do it well. — Emma Donoghue

The Press nowadays is not a literary press; classic diction and brilliancy of style do not distinguish it by any means. — Marie Corelli

I'll be happy if I can gain even the smallest place inside the literary imagination of U.S. readers. — Elliot Perlman

If the masses are not thrown a few novels , they may react by throwing up a few barricades. — Terry Eagleton

He has had her today but he has not had her. No man ever shall. — Orna Ross

By way of this unprecedented, unbridled literary promiscuity, I have made some pleasant discoveries. — Anna Lyndsey

When the literary class betray a destitution of faith, it is not strange that society should be disheartened and sensualized by unbelief. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The aim of literary ambition is to demonstrate one's greatness of soul. — Mason Cooley

We all have a book in us. The first step is recognising this. Writing it is a whole new journey. — Kathryn Joyce

There might be a different model for a literary community that's quicker, more real-time, and involves more spontaneity. — George Saunders

If you write a screenplay that gets circulated, you have a bigger readership than any literary novelist. And it's an educated audience as well. — William Monahan

Dostoevsky was my literary idol for a long time. — Janet Fitch

What do writers look like? — Graham Spaid

There is something underwhelming about scholarly hate mail - the sad literary allusions, the refusal to use contractions. — Brock Clarke

I have never written a book that was not born out of a question I needed to answer for myself. — May Sarton