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Literature
- A losing trade, I assure you, sir: literature is a drug.1803–81 English writer: Lavengro (1851) ch. 30
- Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once.1903–74 English writer: Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 3
- There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power.1785–1859 English essayist and critic: review of the Works of Pope (1847 ed.) in North British Review August 1848, vol. 9
- Nothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction.1923–2014 South African novelist and short-story writer: Nobel lecture: ‘Writing and Being’ 7 December 1991
- Literature is my Utopia.1880–1968 American writer and social reformer, blind and deaf from the age of 19 months: The Story of my Life (1903) ch. 21
- In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.1885–1967 French writer: The Art of Living (1940) ch. 6
- All true literature rises from this childish, hopeful certainty that all people resemble each other.1952– Turkish novelist: My Father's Suitcase: the Nobel Lecture (2006)
- Literature is news that stays news.1885–1972 American poet: The ABC of Reading (1934) ch. 2
- Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.1947– Indian-born British novelist: lecture ‘Is Nothing Sacred’ 6 February 1990
- The illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.1935–2004 French novelist: Malcolm Cowley (ed.) Writers at Work (1958) 1st series
- Remarks are not literature.1874–1946 American writer: Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) ch. 7