Literature Quotes - Page 23

• It is not sex by itself that interests me, but its particular role in American consciousness, and in my own life.

  Jerzy Kosinski

  Sex, Roles, Consciousness

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• There must be no worse punishment to a totalitarian nation than the withdrawal of capital.

  Jerzy Kosinski

  Punishment, Withdrawal, Nations

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• You don't need to invade a place or install a new government to help bring about a positive change.

  Nicholas D. Kristof

  Government, Needs, Helping

  "Guns, Politics And That Fake First Family: How To Create A Better World" by Cathy Chester, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 8, 2015.

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• I think it's restrictive to typecast myself as a novelist because I enjoy other forms of expression. I love literature and I love cinema.

  Julia Leigh

  Thinking, Expression, Novelists

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• Literature gives us a window into other people's experiences in other places, in other times, so I thought it would be really interesting to investigate how different people had written about motherhood, and childhood.

  Natalie Merchant

  Motherhood, People, Giving

  "Natalie Merchant: mother superior" by Kira Cochrane, www.theguardian.com. July 08, 2010.

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• All I write about is what's happened to me and to people I know, and the better I know them, the more likely they are to be written about.

  Norman MacCaig

  Writing, People, Happened

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• And in a way, that's been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet - sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a while. This happens to everybody.

  Norman MacCaig

  Passion, Years, Way

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• And it's impossible for me to read Henry James.

  Norman MacCaig

  Impossible

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• And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping.

  Norman MacCaig

  Eye, Thinking, Names

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• And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.

  Norman MacCaig

  Thinking, Taught, Poetry Is

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• But you'd have a job to find many of my poems which would seem to be very influenced by a particular person.

  Norman MacCaig

  Jobs, Persons, Particular

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• I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.

  Norman MacCaig

  Writing, Mean, Thinking

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• I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.

  Norman MacCaig

  Book

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• I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry.

  Norman MacCaig

  Mimicry, Invention, Said

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• I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century.

  Norman MacCaig

  Boys, Great Love, Lasts

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• I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.

  Norman MacCaig

  Years, American Poetry

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• People haven't got the interest in long long works these days. A lack of interest which I share.

  Norman MacCaig

  Long, People, Share

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• When I talk of hearing a poet's voice speaking, I always think of it as in the presence of the man.

  Norman MacCaig

  Men, Thinking, Voice

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• In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to, what they were doing, why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry.

  Norman MacCaig

  Thinking, People, Way

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• It's like breathing in and out to me. It's like having a conversation with someone who isn't there. Because it has to be addressed to somebody - not a particular person, or very rarely.

  Norman MacCaig

  Breathing, Conversation, Persons

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• The best work of literature to represent the American Dream is 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It shows us how dreaming can be tainted by reality, and that if you don't compromise, you may suffer.

  Azar Nafisi

  Dream, Reality, Suffering

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• I was always drawn to teachers who made class interesting. In high school, I enjoyed my American and English literature classes because my teachers, Jeanne Dorsey and Dani Barton, created an environment where interaction was important.

  Ellen Ochoa

  Teacher, School, Class

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• I am one of the writers who wish to create serious works of literature which dissociate themselves from those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large.

  Kenzaburo Oe

  Reflection, Wish, Culture

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• I would have to say the novel 'War and Peace' influenced me more than any other book. This greatest of novels demonstrated to me the enormous power of literature and fired me up with a desire to become a writer, to participate in what I considered then to be the greatest of all endeavors.

  Douglas Preston

  War, Book, Desire

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• There had been observed in this country certain streams of influence which are causing a marked deterioration in our literature, amusements, and social conduct...a nasty Orientalism which had insidiously affected every channel of expression...The fact that these influences are all traceable to one racial source [Judaism] is something to be reckoned with...Our opposition is only in ideas, false ideas, which are sapping the moral stamina of the people.

  Henry Ford

  Country, Expression, Ideas

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