Best Literature Quotes

Reality is not an inspiration for literature. At its best, literature is an inspiration for reality.

No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.

My greatest influence has been the blues. And that's a literary influence, because I think the blues is the best literature that we as black Americans have.

I think that the best literature has a core that you can't lock to a time or place but that can generate lots of meanings and translations.

The best literature is always a take [in the musical sense]; there is an implicit risk in its execution, a margin of danger that is the pleasure of the flight, of the love, carrying with it a tangible loss but also a total engagement that, on another level, lends the theater its unparalleled imperfection faced with the perfection of film. I don’t want to write anything but takes.

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

Literature is news that stays news.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.

Because the only people for me are the mad ones.

the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,' but that ain't no matter. That book was made by a Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.

Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women mearly players.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

One man in his time plays many parts.

All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

After all, tomorrow is another day.