Quote Category

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

Literature is without proofs. By which it must be understood that it cannot prove, not only what it says, but even that it is worth the trouble of saying it.

Surely the job of fiction is to actually tell the truth. It’s a paradox that’s at the heart of any kind of storytelling.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it.

Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.

If you like to read, sometimes it’s interesting just to go and see what the reality is, of the word, of the seedy or not so seedy fiction writer, the drunk or sober poet… Sometimes you can go looking for illumination.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.