Top 84 Why Literature Quotes
#1. That's why literature is so fascinating. It's always up for interpretation, and could be a hundred different things to a hundred different people. It's never the same thing twice.
Sara Raasch
#2. I suppose if I had to give a one-word answer to the question of why I read, that word would be pleasure. The kind of pleasure you can get from reading is like no other in the world.
Wendy Lesser
#3. The riskiness of Art, the reason why it affects us, is not the riskiness of its subject matter, it is the risk of creating a new way of seeing, a new way of thinking.
Jeanette Winterson
#4. Children's and YA books are about being brave and kind, about learning wisdom and love, about that journey into and through maturity that we all keep starting, and starting again, no matter how old we get. I think that's why so many adults read YA: we're never done coming of age.
Betsy Cornwell
#5. Kostia: When I'm mowing, I don't ask myself why I'm here.
Theodore: You're here to be Master, Konstantin Dmitrievich.
As it's always been, by the grace of God
Leo Tolstoy
#6. The creator of Sir John Falstaff, of Hamlet, and of Rosalind also makes me wish I could be more myself. But that, as I argue throughout this book, is why we should read, and why we should read only the best of what has been written.
Harold Bloom
#7. Esther loses her virginity, hemorrhages during the process, and almost bleeds to death - like Catherine in A Farewell to Arms - and I do wonder why women are always hemorrhaging in American literature.
Matthew Quick
#8. Smash market vs. mass market: Indie authors delve deep into expressive vertical genres. Book stores hold 90-day-credit-return literature. Why wait? In five years, Indie authors will be both.
Peter Prasad
#9. People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.
G.K. Chesterton
#10. Why would a book in which hardly anything happened for most of the time eat at me so much? It was the weirdest thing
Cynthia Kadohata
#11. Popular fiction's a strong and viable force in literature. That's why it's popular.
Nora Roberts
#12. The Lord of the Rings is a million times more interesting than mere literature, which is why mere literary critics cannot get to grips with it.
Robert McNeil
#13. Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches. It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know why one is pleased. Beauty is harder to analyze than truth.
Mortimer J. Adler
#14. For it is a perennial puzzle why no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet.
Virginia Woolf
#15. Lots of children I know are excited to grow up. So I wonder why this man was so happy to become young again?
Sara Rich
#16. When I was a child, I grew up speaking French, I mean, in a French public school. So my first contact with literature was in French, and that's the reason why I write in French.
J.M.G. Le Clezio
#17. The French have a penchant for absolutism, for thinking that things are all one way or all another, which is why their politics are marked by a general inability to compromise and why they tend to hold their personal opinions until the bitter end, even after they have clearly lost an argument.
Mark Zero
#18. Of course you should study whatever you want. The written appreciation and understanding of literature, or any kind of artistic endeavour, is absolutely central to a decent society. Why d'you think books are the first things that the fascists burn?
David Nicholls
#19. White people use their literature to maintain culture. That's why you find references to Milton and Spencer and Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky in contemporary novels.
Ntozake Shange
#20. Literature should not be exclusive, it should be inclusive. My general view is that you can't, based on your own experience, project what a book will do for someone else. That's why I don't review books.
Richard Ford
#21. There is no answer in the available literature to the question why a government monopoly of the provision of money is universally regarded as indispensable ... It has the defects of all monopolies.
Friedrich Hayek
#22. The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.
Anais Nin
#23. Henry James hated epilogues and refused to use them in his fiction. He said that life granted us no "epilogues", so why should art or literature?
Dan Simmons
#24. The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.
Alan Bennett
#25. Here
you warriors
why this moaning and complaining? Have you no more sense than toads and vipers? Our time hasn't come. Have you no patience? Are we not the 'trodden weed' still? The time is not yet here for us to raise our heads. Must you still complain?
Eiji Yoshikawa
#26. I was reading everything under the sun from music history to feminist literature to Shakespeare, which is why I'm not a complete idiot at this time.
Emilie Autumn
#27. We obtained literature by our own efforts, it is a product of our own life, and that is why we love it so much and hold it so dear, why we pin our hopes on it.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#28. There's a German term- heimweh, homesickness. It's a powerful sensation, like a narcotic. A yearning from home, but for something more- a past self, perhaps. A lost self. When I first saw you on the street, Katya, I felt such a sensation ... I have no idea why
Joyce Carol Oates
#29. I'm very impressed by the imagery in the 'Apologia', which is a kind of sustained poem. It's not just a piece of apologetics of the sort you find in Jesuit literature: 'Why I came over', and so on. It's a tremendously rewarding book but requires perseverance on the part of the reader.
John Cornwell
#30. Literature, fiction, poetry, whatever, makes justice in the world. That's why it almost always has to be on the side of the underdog.
Grace Paley
#31. There seemed no reason why she shouldn't try writing something in between, but she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same - you couldn't just soak it up and then squeeze it out again.
David Nicholls
#32. What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons ... we need the most ultimate, the most fearsome, the most fearless "Why?" and "What next?".
Yevgeny Zamyatin
#33. I have preferred to teach my students not English literature but my love for certain authors, or, even better, certain pages, or even better than that, certain lines. One falls in love with a line, then with a page, then with an author. Well, why not? It is a beautiful process.
Jorge Luis Borges
#34. I don't see why escapist literature shouldn't also be a work of art.
P.D. James
#35. I do wonder why women are always hemorrhaging in American literature.
-Pat Peoples
Matthew Quick
#36. Art should walk a tightrope. That's what art should be. Art should be dangerous. You can't be scared to say something with it. People love to talk about how comics are real art and real literature, so why not use these characters to talk about real things, even if it is dangerous?
Jeff Lemire
#37. To be bound in a nutshell, see the world in two inches of ivory, in a grain of sand. Why not, when all of literature, all of art, of human endeavour, is just a speck in the universe of possible things.
Ian McEwan
#38. But why," he said with animation, "do the English not read their own great literature?"
Victor laughed triumphantly, and said, "Because at school they are made to hate it.
Olaf Stapledon
#39. But this is exactly why I read
and don't belong to a book group
because reading is the most individual thing there is. Why collectivize it? Didn't we have enough bad English teachers in school? Crowd sourcing and literature shouldn't mix.
Peter Orner
#40. You may ask, why not simply call this literature Christian? Unfortunately, the word Christian is no longer reliable. It has come to mean anyone with a golden heart. And a golden heart would be a positive interference in the writing of fiction.
Flannery O'Connor
#41. I think part of why I have so many books around me and why I read every day is because I mythologize the writer. I don't do that with any other artists.
Philip Seymour Hoffman
#42. Why should Cornishmen learn Cornish? There is no money in it, it serves no practical purpose, and the literature is scanty and of no great originality or value. The question is a fair one, the answer is simple. Because they are Cornish.
Henry Jenner
#43. Mr. Herbert Demarest
Alexander Hamilton Jr. High
2236 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn NY
Dear Mr Demarest,
Then why don't you give him 'Withering Heights'? At least Heathcoat knew how to kick some ass.
Chas. Banks
3d Base
Steve Kluger
#44. Why is it that human beings are allowed to grow up without the necessary apparatus to make sound ethical decisions?
Jeanette Winterson
#45. Now why should that man have fainted? But he did,and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
#46. Why don't we approach literature like we approach music and the fine arts?
Hugh Howey
#47. I control the world so long as I can name it. Which is why children must chase language before they do anything else, tame the wilderness by describing it, challenge God by learning His hundred names.
Penelope Lively
#48. Estragon: You see, you feel worse when I'm with you. I feel better alone, too.
Vladmir: Then why do you always come crawling back?
Estragon: I don't know.
Samuel Beckett
#49. The question is never "Why the addiction?" but "Why the pain?" The research literature is unequivocal: most hard-core substance abusers come from abusive homes.
Gabor Mate
#51. Only when I make movements away from the tribe of indie art and literature. Maybe that's something important for me to keep thinking about. What you gain, what you lose, why and how. Maybe the edge of the page is the place for me. Maybe that's OK.
Lidia Yuknavitch
#53. Why do people always wonder whether books are any good, without wondering whether they are themselves in a state to profit from them?
Idries Shah
#54. For when you looked into my mother's eyes you knew, as if He had told you, why God sent her into the world - it was to open then minds of all who looked to beautiful thoughts. And that is the beginning and end of literature.
J.M. Barrie
#55. I think most Native American literature is unreadable by the vast majority of Native Americans. Generally speaking Indians don't read books. It's not a book culture. That's why I'm trying to make movies. Indians go to movies; Indians own video recorders.
Sherman Alexie
#56. Love is full of pain and mistakes. That's what makes it interesting and that's why we explore relationships in literature. That whole 'love is never having to say you're sorry' crap is just that, crap. Love is learning how to say you're sorry.
Richard Paul Evans
#57. If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.
Franz Kafka
#58. That is its sole law: everything has to submit to form. If any of literature's other elements are stronger than form, such as style, plot, theme, if any of these take control over form, the result is poor. That is why writers with a strong style often write poor books.
Karl Ove Knausgard
#59. And if literature is not the Bride and Bedfellow of Truth, what is she? 'Confound it all.' he cried, 'why say Bedfellow when one's already said Bride? Why not simply say what one means and save it?
Virginia Woolf
#60. For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism. It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.
Ama Ata Aidoo
#61. Everything we do is escapism, because we'll all be dead and everything we do is completely meaningless. Why brush your teeth? Why not be in the park with the bums passing a short dog? Why pay taxes, why get educated? Of course literature is an escape. You have to fill the hours.
T.C. Boyle
#62. I never wanted to become an actress because I'd read great literature or seen great Shakespeare. It was more just wanting to understand what the people were really like, why they said all the strange things they did.
Julie Walters
#63. No, Ben. What I'm asking is: Are you the vehicle, and Georgie rides around in you? That is why Ben's the driver, right?
Jonathan Harnisch
#64. There isn't a lot of poverty literature in the young-adult world. And I don't know why that is, but I think certainly I felt a gap.
Sherman Alexie
#65. Dostoyevsky wrote of the unconscious as if it were conscious; that is in reality the reason why his characters seem 'pathological', while they are only visualized more clearly than any other figures in imaginative literature ... He was in the rank in which we set Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe.
Edwin Muir
#66. Why? Why is there a crisis in literature? Because of lies and rottenness. Simplicity and sincerity have been replaced by obsfucation and pretense. Men, of course. They love to create mystery where none exists. It's the way they think.
Alexander McCall Smith
#67. People around the world now complain about stressors everyday, and the word shows up throughout professional and lay literature. But in reality there is no such thing as a stressor. Why not? Because nothing has the inherent power to provoke stress.
Andrew J. Bernstein
#68. Samskrit has moulded the minds of our people to the extent to which they themselves are not conscious. Samskrit literature is national in one sense, but its purpose has been universal. That was why it commanded the attention of people who were not followers of a particular culture.
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
#69. With the windows in his top of the range Audi firmly in place we slowly baked ourselves and chatted over why my hatred of golf was wrong, what made a good antihero and why Paul McCartney should just fuck off.
David Louden
#70. There is always the question why
And there is always life,
Which doesn't need an answer.
Dejan Stojanovic
#71. Just why I sent it to the publishers would be hard to say, but when I had finished it I felt that it was literature, because it is real and because it was well written. And I know that the world wants such things.
Mary MacLane
#72. Explain to me, please, why in our literature and art so often people absolutely incompetent in this field have the final word.
Mstislav Rostropovich
#73. Teaching literature is impossible; that is why it is difficult.
Northrop Frye
#74. We all R failures that's why V need #CHILDREN to fulfill D needs of #Society,#Nation,#Worlds , so that we can live the same old selfish way
Tushar Upreti
#75. I am convinced I was once a tree, this is why I love them so.
Raul Brandao
#76. Why is it that those who are the most concerned with manners rarely have any themselves?
Heidi Schulz
#77. I just used a very simple way to explain what are deep ideas, and why can't that be literature?
Mian Mian
#78. Remind me why I'm doing this again?" I whispered back.
"For your real friends, of course: Me, Caleb, and Chad."
"That's sweet of you to say, but I'm not sure we're all friends. Mr. Darcy over here," I indicated Caleb with a nod, "finds me barely tolerable.
Amy Helmes
#79. You don't need to have big hairy feet to read The Hobbit, why should you be gay to read a gay book?
Adriano Bulla
#80. Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life.
Charles Frahman
#81. The novel succeeds on terms exclusive to literature. A good film succeeds on terms exclusive to the cinema. That's why so many bad novels can become good movies, like 'Jaws' or 'The Godfather.'
Alexander Payne
#82. I'm not sure at all that literature should be studied on the university level ... Why should people study books? Isn't it rather silly to study Pride and Prejudice. Either you get it or you don't.
Susan Sontag
#84. George Stigler Nobel laureate and a leader of Chicago School was asked why there were no Nobel Prizes awarded in the other social sciences, sociology, psychology, history, etc. "Don't worry", Stigler said, "they have already have a Nobel Prize in ... Literature"
Robert Kuttner
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