Of course 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.
Francoise Sagan

I had passed through the entire British education system studying literature, culminating in three years of reading English at Oxford, and they'd never told me about something as basic as the importance of point of view in fiction!
Philip Pullman

Given the devaluation of literature and of the study of foreign languages per se in the United States, as well as the preponderance of theory over text in graduate literature studies, creative writing programs keep literature courses populated.
Marilyn Hacker

Few are there that will leave the secure seclusion of the scholar's life, the peaceful walks of literature and learning, to stand out a target for the criticism of unkind and hostile minds.
Felix Adler

He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.
Joseph Heller

In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
Andre Maurois

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.
Margaret Atwood

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.
E. M. Forster

Reverence is fatal to literature.
E. M. Forster

When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years.
Denis Diderot

If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.
Evelyn Waugh

The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.
Willa Cather

Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.
Octavio Paz

More than art, more than literature, music is universally accessible.
Billy Joel

Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.
Herman Hesse

It is not Kafka's fault that his wonderful writings have lately turned into a fad, and are read by people who have neither the ability nor the desire to absorb literature.
Herman Hesse

Without literature my life would be miserable.
Naguib Mahfouz

The Arab world also won the Nobel with me. I believe that international doors have opened, and that from now on, literate people will consider Arab literature also. We deserve that recognition.
Naguib Mahfouz

The Nobel Prize has given me, for the first time in my life, the feeling that my literature could be appreciated on an international level.
Naguib Mahfouz

I didn't make any money from my writing until much later. I published about 80 stories for nothing. I spent on literature.
Naguib Mahfouz