It is with literature as with law or empire – an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession.
The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.
That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.
I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
What is the difference between literature and journalism? Oh! Journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.
We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.
Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry.
This is not ‘writing’ at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.
The web, then, or the pattern: a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature.
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.
Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.[La satire ment sur les gens de lettres pendant leur vie, et l’éloge ment après leur mort.]
Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other.[Медицина – моя законная жена, а литература – любовница. Когда надоедает одна, я ночую у другой.]
