In a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read. – S. I. Hayakawa
In my teens, I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more, so I thought I should be some sort of a scholar. – Trevor Nunn
The problem with literature, with writing, is that it works sometimes in terms of correction of social ills. Other times, it just does not suffice. – Wole Soyinka
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others. – Virginia Woolf
I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing. – Stephen Greenblatt
I went to a British Council event a while back and there were lots of German professors of literature. About half of them were convinced I had a German sense of humour and the other half were sure it was British. They are probably still arguing about it now. – Tibor Fischer
All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what’s cool. – Steven Brust
Size has nothing to do with literature. All legs are long enough to touch the ground, and all books are big enough to fill their covers. – Walter Kirn
When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. – Samuel Lover
Literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor. – William O. Douglas
Writing detective stories is about writing light literature, for entertainment. It isn’t primarily a question of writing propaganda or classical literature. – Stieg Larsson
Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead. – Sinclair Lewis
A lot of my literature deals with these people who are somehow magnetic because they have that ability to step over lines. – Sarah Hall
Chinatown is tremendously interesting… It’s a part of the city that hasn’t really been explored in crime literature or in any general literature. It’s as though Chinatown didn’t exist. People write about New York without mentioning Chinatown at all. – S. J. Rozan
Literature is the ditch I’m going to die in. It’s still the thing I care most about. – Thomas McGuane
Most students of literature can pick apart a metaphor or spot an ethnic stereotype, but not many of them can say things like: ‘The poem’s sardonic tone is curiously at odds with its plodding syntax.’ – Terry Eagleton
When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can. – Samuel Lover
This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant. – Virginia Woolf
Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility. – Wallace Stevens