{ "type": "topic", "site": { "name": "Leafy Quotes", "language": "en", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com" }, "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.", "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature", "heading": "Quotes about literature", "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature.json", "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature.md", "quotes_count": 229, "authors_count": 132, "parent": null, "children": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing", "heading": "Quotes about writing" }, { "name": "reading", "slug": "reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reading", "heading": "Quotes about reading" }, { "name": "poetry", "slug": "poetry", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/poetry", "heading": "Quotes about poetry" }, { "name": "stories", "slug": "stories", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/stories", "heading": "Quotes about stories" }, { "name": "storytelling", "slug": "storytelling", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/storytelling", "heading": "Quotes about storytelling" }, { "name": "libraries", "slug": "libraries", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/libraries", "heading": "Quotes about libraries" }, { "name": "writers", "slug": "writers", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writers", "heading": "Quotes about writers" } ], "quotes": [ { "id": "d6f77050-53b6-43a7-8717-c8fd4b4d856b", "slug": "literature-is-a-vast", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/roberto-bolano/2666/literature-is-a-vast", "text": "Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms and little wildflowers.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Roberto Bolaño", "slug": "roberto-bolano", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/roberto-bolano" }, "book": { "title": "2666", "slug": "2666", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/roberto-bolano/2666" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roberto_Bola%C3%B1o#2666:_A_Novel_(2008)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-26T14:30:01" }, { "id": "5ec65c54-41f3-4ed5-a82c-5f939866bea5", "slug": "the-purpose-of-horror", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-king/danse-macabre/the-purpose-of-horror", "text": "The purpose of horror fiction is not only to explore taboo lands but to confirm our own good feelings about the status quo by showing us extravagant visions of what the alternative might be.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Stephen King", "slug": "stephen-king", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-king" }, "book": { "title": "Danse Macabre", "slug": "danse-macabre", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-king/danse-macabre" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 268, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "fear", "slug": "fear", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/fear" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Danse_Macabre_(book)#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:18:43" }, { "id": "572f606d-a879-45bc-a538-ab512cab4b8c", "slug": "the-good-horror", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-king/danse-macabre/the-good-horror", "text": "The good horror tale will dance its way to the center of your life and find the secret door to the room you believed no one but you knew of—as both Albert Camus and Billy Joel have pointed out, The Stranger makes us nervous... but we love to try on his face in secret.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Stephen King", "slug": "stephen-king", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-king" }, "book": { "title": "Danse Macabre", "slug": "danse-macabre", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-king/danse-macabre" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 18, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "fear", "slug": "fear", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/fear" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Danse_Macabre_(book)#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:18:43" }, { "id": "a425c004-96c5-4e13-ba31-4fe06c12f66f", "slug": "dickens-spoke-in-a-new", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-smiley/charles-dickens/dickens-spoke-in-a-new", "text": "Dickens...spoke in a new voice, in a new form, to a new audience, of a new world, about several old ideas reconsidered for the new system of capitalism—that care and respect are owed to the weakest and meekest in society, rather than to the strongest; that the ways in which class and money divide humans from one another are artificial and dangerous; that pleasure and physical comfort are positive goods; that the spiritual lives of the powerful have social and economic ramifications. We might today call this an ecological perspective, an intuitive understanding of the social world as a web rather than a hierarchy—the quintessential modern mode of seeing the world. Dickens grasped this idea from the earliest stages of his career and demonstrated his increasingly sophisticated grasp of it in the plots, characterizations, themes, and style of every single novel he wrote. This is the root source of his greatness.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jane Smiley", "slug": "jane-smiley", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-smiley" }, "book": { "title": "Charles Dickens", "slug": "charles-dickens", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-smiley/charles-dickens" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jane_Smiley#Charles_Dickens_(2003)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:06:26" }, { "id": "686d531d-1a99-43cc-81ea-2e8c19969c39", "slug": "the-novel-is-above", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-smiley/charles-dickens/the-novel-is-above", "text": "The novel is, above all, an intense experience of prolonged intimacy with another consciousness.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jane Smiley", "slug": "jane-smiley", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-smiley" }, "book": { "title": "Charles Dickens", "slug": "charles-dickens", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-smiley/charles-dickens" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "reading", "slug": "reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reading" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jane_Smiley#Charles_Dickens_(2003)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:06:26" }, { "id": "896976e6-8b8c-4daa-8ad1-ad41bb9b79c0", "slug": "in-the-mansion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/junichiro-tanizaki/in-praise-of-shadows/in-the-mansion", "text": "In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration. I do not ask that this be done everywhere, but perhaps we may be allowed at least one mansion where we can turn off the electric lights and see what it is like without them.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Junichiro Tanizaki", "slug": "junichiro-tanizaki", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/junichiro-tanizaki" }, "book": { "title": "In Praise of Shadows", "slug": "in-praise-of-shadows", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/junichiro-tanizaki/in-praise-of-shadows" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 42, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "beauty", "slug": "beauty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/beauty" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jun'ichir%C5%8D_Tanizaki#In_Praise_of_Shadows_(1933)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:06:22" }, { "id": "9acd3339-12ff-4baa-94a2-45b8df0eb4e0", "slug": "it-is-difficult", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edna-ferber/one-basket/it-is-difficult", "text": "It is difficult to write a really good short story because it must be a complete and finished reflection of life with only a few words to use as tools. There isn't time for bad writing in a short story. In a novel one can be dull for pages and still get away with it. It is, to me, an interesting and baffling fact that today, more than thirty years after The Homely Heroine was written, it still is as difficult for me to write a short story (or anything, for that matter) as it was when first I began. A single short story may take a month, six weeks, two months to write. Usually, the easier they are to read the harder they are to write. Often a short story theme may take a year of conscious and subconscious thinking before it is ripe for writing. Sometimes a possible short story seems too tough to be worth the fight. But it stays around, taunting you, daring you to come on, and finally you write it to be rid of it...In some cases the reader may feel, after reading a short story, approximately the sensation he has experienced after having too hastily eaten a heavy meal. He has treated a dinner as a snack and his digestion rebels.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Edna Ferber", "slug": "edna-ferber", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edna-ferber" }, "book": { "title": "One Basket", "slug": "one-basket", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edna-ferber/one-basket" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edna_Ferber#Introduction", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:04:52" }, { "id": "62f673e7-f043-4b50-b2f5-882951b53d6a", "slug": "all-the-way", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edna-ferber/one-basket/all-the-way", "text": "All the way from Maugham and de Maupassant and Chekhov to Ring Lardner the short story has served to portray the characteristics, the habits, the manners, the morals, the emotions of a nation, a whole people. Certainly I knew no such highfalutin arguments as these when first I began to write short stories. I wrote short stories for the same reason that a child has who begins to walk after he has learned to stand up and to balance himself. It was for me the next natural step following newspaper reporting. I still think it is one of the most exhilarating and the most difficult forms of the writing art. When a reader says, \"Oh, only a short story!\" he has me to fight. There is something about the pace of the short story that catches the tempo of this country. If it is written with sincerity and skill it portrays a mood, a character, a background, or a situation. Sometimes it is not only typically American, it is universal in its feeling; sometimes its inherent truth is not a thing of the month, but of the years. When this is true, that short story is as genuinely a classic as any novel or play or piece of music.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Edna Ferber", "slug": "edna-ferber", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edna-ferber" }, "book": { "title": "One Basket", "slug": "one-basket", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edna-ferber/one-basket" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edna_Ferber#Introduction", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:04:52" }, { "id": "a13b01b2-de3a-442a-b924-4db18efe4911", "slug": "literature-must-of-necessity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/paula-gunn-allen/the-sacred-hoop/literature-must-of-necessity", "text": "Literature must, of necessity, express and articulate the deepest perceptions, relationships, and attitudes of a culture, whether it does so deliberately or accidentally.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Paula Gunn Allen", "slug": "paula-gunn-allen", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/paula-gunn-allen" }, "book": { "title": "The Sacred Hoop", "slug": "the-sacred-hoop", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/paula-gunn-allen/the-sacred-hoop" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "culture", "slug": "culture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/culture" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paula_Gunn_Allen#Chapter_Two", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:04:38" }, { "id": "a06a7776-0fb5-46a1-a7ed-dd36bf282983", "slug": "the-power-of-imagination", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/paula-gunn-allen/the-sacred-hoop/the-power-of-imagination", "text": "The power of imagination, of image, which is the fundamental power of literature, is the power to determine a people’s fate.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Paula Gunn Allen", "slug": "paula-gunn-allen", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/paula-gunn-allen" }, "book": { "title": "The Sacred Hoop", "slug": "the-sacred-hoop", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/paula-gunn-allen/the-sacred-hoop" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "imagination", "slug": "imagination", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/imagination" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paula_Gunn_Allen#Chapter_Three", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:04:38" }, { "id": "0cb9d575-8d80-4757-a9c7-9acf4655c724", "slug": "the-human-mind", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-tenn/of-all-possible-worlds/the-human-mind", "text": "The human mind is lit by an elemental sense of wonder, a probing, restless curiosity that is our primate heritage and that from its beginnings has sought a knowledge, some knowledge, of the future. To satisfy that need there has come into being a massive and thoroughly modern creation, science fiction, the literature of extrapolative, industrial man.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "William Tenn", "slug": "william-tenn", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-tenn" }, "book": { "title": "Of All Possible Worlds", "slug": "of-all-possible-worlds", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-tenn/of-all-possible-worlds" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 12, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "curiosity", "slug": "curiosity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/curiosity" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Tenn#Of_All_Possible_Worlds_(1955)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:57" }, { "id": "20009734-bf86-4762-9e28-b601febdc0e2", "slug": "there-is-nearly", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson/reamde/there-is-nearly", "text": "“There is nearly always a chthonic link. The object-imbued-with-numinous-power tends to be of mineral origin: gold, perhaps mined from a special vein, or a jewel of extraordinary rarity, or a sword forged from a shooting star. The vast popularity attests to the power of these motifs to seize the reader’s attention, down at the level of the reptilian brain, even as the cerebrum is getting sick.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Neal Stephenson", "slug": "neal-stephenson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson" }, "book": { "title": "Reamde", "slug": "reamde", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson/reamde" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Reamde#Day_2", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:46" }, { "id": "a9e8d977-a19f-4892-9125-78ec667df84e", "slug": "as-a-fantasy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson/reamde/as-a-fantasy", "text": "As a fantasy writer, Skraelin was not highly regarded…\n\n“…one cannot call him profoundly mediocre without venturing so far out on the critical limb as to bend it to the ground…”\n\n“…so derivative that the reader loses track of who he’s ripping off…”\n\n“…to say he is tin-eared would render a disservice to a blameless citizen of the periodic table of the elements…”\n\nBut he was so freakishly prolific…and prolific was what Richard needed at this point in the game.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Neal Stephenson", "slug": "neal-stephenson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson" }, "book": { "title": "Reamde", "slug": "reamde", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson/reamde" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "criticism", "slug": "criticism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/criticism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Reamde#Thanksgiving", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:45" }, { "id": "fee14550-4f55-4815-94a7-2fca2535d4bb", "slug": "but-please-remember", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/2001-a-space-odyssey/but-please-remember", "text": "But please remember this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Arthur C. Clarke", "slug": "arthur-c-clarke", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke" }, "book": { "title": "2001: A Space Odyssey", "slug": "2001-a-space-odyssey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/2001-a-space-odyssey" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "truth", "slug": "truth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/truth" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(novel)#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:44" }, { "id": "04a7b880-4430-4346-b46f-2fb9a65ed5ef", "slug": "air-chrysalis-had", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/1q84/air-chrysalis-had", "text": "Air Chrysalis had long since disappeared from the bestseller lists. Number one on the list now was a diet book entitled Eat as Much as You Want of the Food You Love and Still Lose Weight. What a great title. The whole book could be blank inside and it would still sell.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Haruki Murakami", "slug": "haruki-murakami", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami" }, "book": { "title": "1Q84", "slug": "1q84", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/1q84" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 776, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/1Q84#Book_3_(October-December)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:39" }, { "id": "cfc36e1e-de6d-4332-82fd-e44ca9e80eed", "slug": "in-short-fahrenheit", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jim-c-hines/unbound/in-short-fahrenheit", "text": "In short, Fahrenheit 451 was never meant to be an instruction manual.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jim C. Hines", "slug": "jim-c-hines", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jim-c-hines" }, "book": { "title": "Unbound", "slug": "unbound", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jim-c-hines/unbound" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 355, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "censorship", "slug": "censorship", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/censorship" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jim_C._Hines#Unbound_(2015)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:21" }, { "id": "185e7127-50c9-4466-a122-2a3c55b5686b", "slug": "modern-fantasy-is-little", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jim-c-hines/unbound/modern-fantasy-is-little", "text": "Modern fantasy is little more than juvenile escapism and anachronistic longing for a time that never existed. I’ve never understood the appeal.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jim C. Hines", "slug": "jim-c-hines", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jim-c-hines" }, "book": { "title": "Unbound", "slug": "unbound", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jim-c-hines/unbound" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 305, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jim_C._Hines#Unbound_(2015)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:21" }, { "id": "cfe777e6-0db2-4f01-ac23-0c39cfd32987", "slug": "if-books-are", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jim-c-hines/libriomancer/if-books-are", "text": "If books are indeed magic (and does anyone really believe otherwise?), then they are a collaborative magic between author and reader.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jim C. Hines", "slug": "jim-c-hines", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jim-c-hines" }, "book": { "title": "Libriomancer", "slug": "libriomancer", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jim-c-hines/libriomancer" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "reading", "slug": "reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reading" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "magic", "slug": "magic", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/magic" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jim_C._Hines#Libriomancer_(2012)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:20" }, { "id": "e285536d-e9aa-47ea-9a32-5e0e99869a64", "slug": "literature-is-prophetic-life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/rosario-ferre/sweet-diamond-dust/literature-is-prophetic-life", "text": "Literature is prophetic-life often lives up to fiction (\"Preface: Memoir of Diamond Dust\")", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Rosario Ferré", "slug": "rosario-ferre", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/rosario-ferre" }, "book": { "title": "Sweet Diamond Dust", "slug": "sweet-diamond-dust", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/rosario-ferre/sweet-diamond-dust" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rosario_Ferr%C3%A9#Sweet_Diamond_Dust:_And_Other_Stories_(1988)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:56" }, { "id": "0b5071fd-5c13-4b5a-8f8f-7d68542436e0", "slug": "you-know-ive", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ahdaf-soueif/in-the-eye-of-the-sun/you-know-ive", "text": "“You know, I've been thinking: all the women in the books you like -- Sartre and Camus and all that -- they don't really exist. Not as people. They're only there to wait for the men. To love them and be loved back or not -- mostly not; to be beaten up or killed; to appear as a face on the wall of Meurseault's cell--”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ahdaf Soueif", "slug": "ahdaf-soueif", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ahdaf-soueif" }, "book": { "title": "In the Eye of the Sun", "slug": "in-the-eye-of-the-sun", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ahdaf-soueif/in-the-eye-of-the-sun" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "women", "slug": "women", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/women" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ahdaf_Soueif#In_the_Eye_of_the_Sun_(1992_novel)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:54" }, { "id": "9c7f55c5-2825-4745-8f56-b74b547a2387", "slug": "mr-wonderful-isnt", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan/leave-me-alone-im-reading/mr-wonderful-isnt", "text": "“Mr. Wonderful isn’t just going to knock on the door,” a girlfriend once said, chiding me. “Why not?” I thought. That’s the way people often meet in books—effortlessly, without guile or strategizing.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Maureen Corrigan", "slug": "maureen-corrigan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan" }, "book": { "title": "Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading", "slug": "leave-me-alone-im-reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan/leave-me-alone-im-reading" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 95, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "love", "slug": "love", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/love" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Maureen_Corrigan#Leave_Me_Alone,_I'm_Reading_(2005)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:28" }, { "id": "61f2e3ed-481f-4806-a427-d8d687f12218", "slug": "such-is-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan/leave-me-alone-im-reading/such-is-the", "text": "Such is the power of words, of writing, of books. Words you loved and will always yearn for. They can inspire you with possibilities you otherwise would have never imagined; they can fill your head with misleading fantasies. They can give you back your seemingly seamless past and place it right alongside your chaotic present.\n\n“But that only happens in books,” my mother, pretty much immune to the power of the written word, would say.\n\nExactly. That’s why I can’t stop reading them.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Maureen Corrigan", "slug": "maureen-corrigan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan" }, "book": { "title": "Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading", "slug": "leave-me-alone-im-reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan/leave-me-alone-im-reading" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 184, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "reading", "slug": "reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reading" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "words", "slug": "words", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/words" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Maureen_Corrigan#Leave_Me_Alone,_I'm_Reading_(2005)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:28" }, { "id": "1e79dcfb-a168-4784-a6a5-e2744541bd6f", "slug": "angels-in-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan/leave-me-alone-im-reading/angels-in-the", "text": "Angels in the house always die in the books they preside over because early ascension into heaven is their reward—and because their goodness makes them boring.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Maureen Corrigan", "slug": "maureen-corrigan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan" }, "book": { "title": "Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading", "slug": "leave-me-alone-im-reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan/leave-me-alone-im-reading" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 141, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "kindness", "slug": "kindness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/kindness" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "boredom", "slug": "boredom", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/boredom" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Maureen_Corrigan#Leave_Me_Alone,_I'm_Reading_(2005)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:28" }, { "id": "b7f3a010-5d40-4b29-9ebb-a09913b9f68e", "slug": "we-read-literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan/leave-me-alone-im-reading/we-read-literature", "text": "We read literature for a lot of reasons, but two of the most compelling ones are to get out of ourselves and our own life stories and—equally important—to find ourselves by understanding our own life stories more clearly in the context of others’.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Maureen Corrigan", "slug": "maureen-corrigan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan" }, "book": { "title": "Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading", "slug": "leave-me-alone-im-reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan/leave-me-alone-im-reading" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 34, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "self-knowledge", "slug": "self-knowledge", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/self-knowledge" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Maureen_Corrigan#Leave_Me_Alone,_I'm_Reading_(2005)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:27" }, { "id": "54ca6772-bd5e-4d76-be1d-f1b5f57d31c6", "slug": "i-dont-believe", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan/leave-me-alone-im-reading/i-dont-believe", "text": "I don’t believe in identity politics in literature—or in life much, either. Indeed the current scholarly enchantment with identity politics strikes me as a more intellectual version of the warning oft heard around Sunnyside when I was growing up: “Stick with your own kind.” Family and cultural origins are crucial to self-definition, but they’re not the end of the story. I certainly don’t think that we readers only or even chiefly enjoy or understand books whose main characters mirror us. In fact, the opportunity to become who we are decidedly not—whether it’s Amis’s Dixon or Philip Roth’s Portnoy or Ellison’s Invisible Man or Kafka’s beetle—is one of the greatest gifts reading offers. Women readers get to serve on that floating boy’s club, the Pequod; male readers get to step into Elizabeth Bennet’s shoes and teach Mr. Darcy the dance of humility; readers of either gender who are not African American get to crawl toward freedom alongside Toni Morrison’s Sethe. One of the most magical and liberating things about literature is that it can transport us readers into worlds totally unlike our own.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Maureen Corrigan", "slug": "maureen-corrigan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan" }, "book": { "title": "Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading", "slug": "leave-me-alone-im-reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan/leave-me-alone-im-reading" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 70, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "identity", "slug": "identity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/identity" }, { "name": "reading", "slug": "reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reading" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Maureen_Corrigan#Leave_Me_Alone,_I'm_Reading_(2005)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:27" }, { "id": "004ee662-63ea-4d5c-90ca-610f51d2abb0", "slug": "works-that-have", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/kafka-on-the-shore/works-that-have", "text": "Works that have a certain imperfection to them have an appeal for that you're attracted to Soseki's The Miner. There's something in it that draws you in, more than more fully realized novels like Kokoro or Sanshiro. You discover something about that work that tugs at your heart-or maybe we should say that work discovers you.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Haruki Murakami", "slug": "haruki-murakami", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami" }, "book": { "title": "Kafka on the Shore", "slug": "kafka-on-the-shore", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/kafka-on-the-shore" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "flaws", "slug": "flaws", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/flaws" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kafka_on_the_Shore#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:18" }, { "id": "143d441b-0668-4cd3-812a-3974cd45f348", "slug": "why-did-people", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie/americanah/why-did-people", "text": "Why did people ask \"What is it about?\" as if a novel had to be about only one thing.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie", "slug": "chimamanda-ngozi-adichie", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie" }, "book": { "title": "Americanah", "slug": "americanah", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie/americanah" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Chimamanda_Ngozi_Adichie#Americanah_(2013)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:01:39" }, { "id": "ab68b5c1-1b13-4ca6-bc26-6f6778309206", "slug": "what-these-tales", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-lamb/tales-from-shakespeare/what-these-tales", "text": "What these Tales shall have been to the young readers, that and much more it is the writers' wish that the true Plays of Shakespeare may prove to them in older years—enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, generosity, humanity: for of examples, teaching these virtues, his pages are full.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Charles Lamb", "slug": "charles-lamb", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-lamb" }, "book": { "title": "Tales From Shakespeare", "slug": "tales-from-shakespeare", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-lamb/tales-from-shakespeare" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "morality", "slug": "morality", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tales_from_Shakespeare#Preface", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:01:26" }, { "id": "f1bc8fbf-222b-4620-a70b-2b41ff9eced0", "slug": "kester-wrote-about", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-howatch/the-wheel-of-fortune/kester-wrote-about", "text": "Kester wrote about people and since human nature doesn't change his observations hadn't dated.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Susan Howatch", "slug": "susan-howatch", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-howatch" }, "book": { "title": "The Wheel Of Fortune", "slug": "the-wheel-of-fortune", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-howatch/the-wheel-of-fortune" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Susan_Howatch#Part_6:_Hal", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:45" }, { "id": "9cf964c9-ffdd-4377-9a4b-e5302bbbc7a1", "slug": "half-of-all", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/poseidons-wake/half-of-all", "text": "Half of all the great art and literature in existence went unrecognised during the lifetimes of its creators.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Alastair Reynolds", "slug": "alastair-reynolds", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds" }, "book": { "title": "Poseidon's Wake", "slug": "poseidons-wake", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/poseidons-wake" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 109, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "art", "slug": "art", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/art" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alastair_Reynolds#Poseidon's_Wake_(2015)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:42" }, { "id": "2f770f34-4f95-47e5-a37e-2f324bcb4732", "slug": "well-i-left", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/orthodoxy/well-i-left", "text": "Well, I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "G. Chesterton", "slug": "g-chesterton", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton" }, "book": { "title": "Orthodoxy", "slug": "orthodoxy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/orthodoxy" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "childhood", "slug": "childhood", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/childhood" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Orthodoxy_(book)#Chapter_IV._'The_Ethics_of_Elfland%22", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:13" }, { "id": "a69466b1-3016-4911-a049-75a5318e99f0", "slug": "when-a-natural", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/blaise-pascal/pensees/when-a-natural", "text": "When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours. ...such community of intellect that we have with him necessarily inclines the heart to love.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Blaise Pascal", "slug": "blaise-pascal", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/blaise-pascal" }, "book": { "title": "Pensees", "slug": "pensees", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/blaise-pascal/pensees" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "truth", "slug": "truth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/truth" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pens%C3%A9es#Section_I:_Thoughts_on_Mind_and_Style_(1-59)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:59:46" }, { "id": "a2e75540-74ef-4d76-a1ef-a1ffcfaa29ec", "slug": "fiction-is-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/abraham-verghese/the-covenant-of-water/fiction-is-the", "text": "Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives!", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Abraham Verghese", "slug": "abraham-verghese", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/abraham-verghese" }, "book": { "title": "The Covenant of Water", "slug": "the-covenant-of-water", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/abraham-verghese/the-covenant-of-water" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "truth", "slug": "truth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/truth" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Abraham_Verghese#The_Covenant_of_Water_(2023)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:59:39" }, { "id": "46a271f8-88a6-4775-86e9-00260a0fc0f1", "slug": "sometimes-old-nan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-rr-martin/a-storm-of-swords/sometimes-old-nan", "text": "Sometimes Old Nan would tell the same story she’d told before, but we never minded, if it was a good story. Old stories are like old friends, she used to say. You have to visit them from time to time.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "George RR Martin", "slug": "george-rr-martin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-rr-martin" }, "book": { "title": "A Storm of Swords", "slug": "a-storm-of-swords", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-rr-martin/a-storm-of-swords" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "friendship", "slug": "friendship", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/friendship" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire#A_Storm_of_Swords_(2000)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:58:50" }, { "id": "262d5b28-d591-4a03-b1a7-d8221b2d71e2", "slug": "in-dad-found", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ta-nehisi-coates/the-beautiful-struggle-a-memoir/in-dad-found", "text": "In , Dad found a literature of himself. He'd read and , but from Wright he learned that there was an entire shadow canon, a tradition of writers who grabbed the pen, not out of leisure but to break the chain.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ta-Nehisi Coates", "slug": "ta-nehisi-coates", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ta-nehisi-coates" }, "book": { "title": "The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir", "slug": "the-beautiful-struggle-a-memoir", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ta-nehisi-coates/the-beautiful-struggle-a-memoir" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 72, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ta-Nehisi_Coates#The_Beautiful_Struggle:_A_Memoir_(2008)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:57:50" }, { "id": "1d3a9dff-6c38-4168-913f-cec41c8507e7", "slug": "it-is-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jeff-vandermeer/city-of-saints-and-madmen/it-is-the", "text": "It is the nature of the writer to question the validity of his world and yet rely on his senses to describe it. From what other tension can great literature be born?", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jeff VanderMeer", "slug": "jeff-vandermeer", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jeff-vandermeer" }, "book": { "title": "City of Saints and Madmen", "slug": "city-of-saints-and-madmen", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jeff-vandermeer/city-of-saints-and-madmen" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 196, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jeff_VanderMeer#City_of_Saints_and_Madmen_(2001%E2%80%932004)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:57:23" }, { "id": "cbd310ba-dbce-43c3-9dec-7a9000079cbd", "slug": "fiction-is-unlike", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-mcdevitt/odyssey/fiction-is-unlike", "text": "Fiction is unlike reality because it has an end, a conclusion, which allows the characters to stroll happily, or perhaps simply more wisely, out through the climax into the epilogue. But life is a tapestry. It has no satisfactory end. There are simply periods of acceleration and delay, victory and frustration, seasoned with periodic jolts of reality.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jack Mcdevitt", "slug": "jack-mcdevitt", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-mcdevitt" }, "book": { "title": "Odyssey", "slug": "odyssey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-mcdevitt/odyssey" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 412, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jack_McDevitt#Odyssey_(2006)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:56:58" }, { "id": "9dadcbfd-1bd7-4171-b3b9-c21263dd6651", "slug": "the-state-is-always", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/liquidation/the-state-is-always", "text": "The state is always the same. The only reason it financed literature up till now was in order to liquidate it. Giving state support to literature is the state's sneaky way for the state liquidation of literature.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Imre Kertész", "slug": "imre-kertesz", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz" }, "book": { "title": "Liquidation", "slug": "liquidation", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/liquidation" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "power", "slug": "power", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Imre_Kert%C3%A9sz#Liquidation_(2003)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:56:30" }, { "id": "298dd512-2389-4542-b9b4-d75d3c730ad0", "slug": "b-y-writing-an-aenead", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-barth/final-fridays/b-y-writing-an-aenead", "text": "[B]y writing an Aenead that combines an Odyssey with an Iliad, Virgil gives the impression of wanting to outdo the Homer of whom he is the self-conscious heir and to whom his Latin epic is also a homage, just as Augustan Rome is at once the cultural heir and political master of classical Greece. You want to be a great epic poet? Here are your models. Virgil follows them—programmatically but not slavishly—and because he happens to be a great epic poet, his Aenead turns out to be not a monumental Case-1 imitation of the great model, but a great epic poem. Thirteen centuries later, Dante compounds the stunt, taking as his literal and figurative guide not \"unselfconscious\" Homer but self-conscious (and Homer-conscious) Virgil, and not only scripts himself into the wandering hero role but orchestrates his own welcome … into the company of the immortals—in a Limbo, moreover, where they must ineluctably remain, but from which he will proceed through Purgatory to Paradise. Talk about chutzpah! Happening to be a great poet, Dante brings the thing off.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Barth", "slug": "john-barth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-barth" }, "book": { "title": "Final Fridays", "slug": "final-fridays", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-barth/final-fridays" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 54, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "poetry", "slug": "poetry", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/poetry" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Barth#Final_Fridays_(2012)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:56:04" }, { "id": "89b89a04-0b63-4711-83a4-5948a8ef49f4", "slug": "it-began-to-dawn", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/chinua-achebe/home-and-exile/it-began-to-dawn", "text": "It began to dawn on me that although fiction was undoubtedly fictitious it could also be true or false, not with the truth or falsehood of a news item but as to its disinterestedness, its intention, its integrity.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Chinua Achebe", "slug": "chinua-achebe", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/chinua-achebe" }, "book": { "title": "Home and Exile", "slug": "home-and-exile", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/chinua-achebe/home-and-exile" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "truth", "slug": "truth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/truth" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Chinua_Achebe#Home_and_Exile_(2000)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:55:56" }, { "id": "d1944d1f-045a-483d-b4a8-053640b034d7", "slug": "real-tragedy-is-never", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/chinua-achebe/no-longer-at-ease/real-tragedy-is-never", "text": "Real tragedy is never resolved. It goes on hopelessly forever. Conventional tragedy is too easy. The hero dies and we feel a purging of the emotions. A real tragedy takes place in a corner, in an untidy spot, to quote W. H. Auden.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Chinua Achebe", "slug": "chinua-achebe", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/chinua-achebe" }, "book": { "title": "No Longer at Ease", "slug": "no-longer-at-ease", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/chinua-achebe/no-longer-at-ease" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 43, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "suffering", "slug": "suffering", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Chinua_Achebe#No_Longer_at_Ease_(1960)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:55:54" }, { "id": "b860f377-d33e-404a-a7a4-fbccc4bc25bd", "slug": "where-does-any", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man/where-does-any", "text": "Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in town, to be sure. Every great town is a kind of man-show, where the novelist goes for his stock, just as the agriculturist goes to the cattle-show for his. But in the one fair, new species of quadrupeds are hardly more rare, than in the other are new species of characters — that is, original ones. Their rarity may still the more appear from this, that, while characters, merely singular, imply but singular forms so to speak, original ones, truly so, imply original instincts.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Herman Melville", "slug": "herman-melville", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville" }, "book": { "title": "The Confidence-Man", "slug": "the-confidence-man", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Confidence-Man#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:55:34" }, { "id": "6d1e032e-90a7-46bf-b452-87dcf57aa7ba", "slug": "a-reply-must", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man/a-reply-must", "text": "A reply must in civility be made to a certain voice which methinks I hear, that, in view of past chapters, and more particularly the last, where certain antics appear, exclaims: How unreal all this is! Who did ever dress or act like your cosmopolitan? And who, it might be returned, did ever dress or act like harlequin?\n\nStrange, that in a work of amusement, this severe fidelity to real life should be exacted by any one, who, by taking up such a work, sufficiently shows that he is not unwilling to drop real life, and turn, for a time, to something different. Yes, it is, indeed, strange that any one should clamor for the thing he is weary of; that any one, who, for any cause, finds real life dull, should yet demand of him who is to divert his attention from it, that he should be true to that dullness.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Herman Melville", "slug": "herman-melville", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville" }, "book": { "title": "The Confidence-Man", "slug": "the-confidence-man", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "reality", "slug": "reality", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reality" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Confidence-Man#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:55:34" }, { "id": "37d1b263-3ec2-4929-a029-5a920362b414", "slug": "if-reason-be-judge", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man/if-reason-be-judge", "text": "If reason be judge, no writer has produced such inconsistent characters as nature herself has. It must call for no small sagacity in a reader unerringly to discriminate in a novel between the inconsistencies of conception and those of life as elsewhere. Experience is the only guide here; but as no one man can be coextensive with what is, it may be unwise in every case to rest upon it.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Herman Melville", "slug": "herman-melville", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville" }, "book": { "title": "The Confidence-Man", "slug": "the-confidence-man", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "experience", "slug": "experience", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/experience" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Confidence-Man#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:55:34" }, { "id": "33a0fa36-dbe6-4537-bb13-9462e019d81c", "slug": "for-much-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man/for-much-the", "text": "For much the same reason that there is but one planet to one orbit, so can there be but one such original character to one work of invention.\n\nTwo would conflict to chaos. In this view, to say that there are more than one to a book, is good presumption there is none at all. But for new, singular, striking, odd, eccentric, and all sorts of entertaining and instructive characters, a good fiction may be full of them. To produce such characters, an author, beside other things, must have seen much, and seen through much: to produce but one original character, he must have had much luck.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Herman Melville", "slug": "herman-melville", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville" }, "book": { "title": "The Confidence-Man", "slug": "the-confidence-man", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Confidence-Man#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:55:34" }, { "id": "d28ee660-a8af-4f5d-894b-c16d48dbd183", "slug": "science-is-like", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gregory-benford/timescape/science-is-like", "text": "Science is like literature, a continuing dialog among diverse and conflicting voices, no one ever wholly right or wholly wrong, but a steady conversation forever provisional and personal and living.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Gregory Benford", "slug": "gregory-benford", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gregory-benford" }, "book": { "title": "Timescape", "slug": "timescape", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gregory-benford/timescape" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 498, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "science", "slug": "science", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gregory_Benford#Timescape_(1980)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:55:22" }, { "id": "082831f8-d0fd-41f2-962d-cb81a15ba0ae", "slug": "then-it-happened", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-fante/brotherhood-of-the-grape/then-it-happened", "text": "Then it happened. One night as the rain beat on the slanted kitchen roof a great spirit slipped forever into my life. I held his books in my hands and trembled as he spoke to me of man and the world, of love and wisdom, pain and guilt, and I knew I would never be the same. His name was Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky. He knew more of fathers and sons than any man in the world, of brothers and sisters, priests and rogues, guilt and innocence. Dostoyevsky changed me. The Idiot, The Possessed, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler. He turned me inside out. I found I could breathe, could see invisible horizons. It was time to become a man, to leave San Elmo and go out into the world. I wanted to think and feel like Dostoyevsky. I wanted to write.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Fante", "slug": "john-fante", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-fante" }, "book": { "title": "Brotherhood Of The Grape", "slug": "brotherhood-of-the-grape", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-fante/brotherhood-of-the-grape" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 72, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "reading", "slug": "reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reading" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Fante#The_Brotherhood_of_the_Grape_(1977)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:57" }, { "id": "cdc3aed8-91df-462e-a0b5-6aff39e0ab64", "slug": "stories-have-no-point", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/don-delillo/mao-ii/stories-have-no-point", "text": "\"Stories have no point if they don't absorb our terror.\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Don DeLillo", "slug": "don-delillo", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/don-delillo" }, "book": { "title": "Mao II", "slug": "mao-ii", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/don-delillo/mao-ii" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "fear", "slug": "fear", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/fear" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "storytelling", "slug": "storytelling", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/storytelling" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Don_DeLillo#Mao_II_(1991)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:32" }, { "id": "65b07e8f-d646-4596-a27b-a8b9f55878d5", "slug": "if-i-were", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/don-delillo/the-names/if-i-were", "text": "If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Don DeLillo", "slug": "don-delillo", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/don-delillo" }, "book": { "title": "The Names", "slug": "the-names", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/don-delillo/the-names" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Don_DeLillo#The_Names_(1982)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:32" }, { "id": "e0d51c1b-d128-4cab-ac54-663b867bcd65", "slug": "i-am-satisfied", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/anne-bronte/the-tenant-of-wildfell-hall/i-am-satisfied", "text": "I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are, or should be, written for both men and women to read, and I am at loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Anne Brontë", "slug": "anne-bronte", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/anne-bronte" }, "book": { "title": "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall", "slug": "the-tenant-of-wildfell-hall", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/anne-bronte/the-tenant-of-wildfell-hall" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "women", "slug": "women", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/women" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "equality", "slug": "equality", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/equality" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anne_Bront%C3%AB#The_Tenant_of_Wildfell_Hall_(1848)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:27" }, { "id": "12fc5657-94a7-4dab-847b-1e334e58a959", "slug": "its-a-thing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-stross/halting-state/its-a-thing", "text": "It’s a thing of beauty, the ability to spin the cloth of reality, and you’re a sucker for it: Isn’t story-telling what being human is all about?", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Charles Stross", "slug": "charles-stross", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-stross" }, "book": { "title": "Halting State", "slug": "halting-state", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-stross/halting-state" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 96, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Stross#Halting_State_(2007)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:06" }, { "id": "2f02aaf9-867b-444d-8f12-3bbaa228e75e", "slug": "sprockett-buzzed-briefly", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jasper-fforde/one-of-our-thursdays-is-missing/sprockett-buzzed-briefly", "text": "Sprockett buzzed briefly to himself. “Does that sort of thing happen out there in the RealWorld, or is it just in books?”\n\nI thought for a moment. Of the untidy chaos I had seen in the RealWorld; of not knowing what was going to happen; of not knowing what, if anything, head relevance. The RealWorld was a sprawling mess of a book in need of a good editor. I thought then of the narrative order here in the BookWorld, our resolved plot lines and the observance of natural justice we took for granted.\n\n“Literature is claimed to be a mirror of the world,” I said, “but the Outlanders are fooling themselves. The BookWorld is as orderly as people in the RealWorld hope their own world to be—it isn’t a mirror, it’s an aspiration.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jasper Fforde", "slug": "jasper-fforde", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jasper-fforde" }, "book": { "title": "One of Our Thursdays Is Missing", "slug": "one-of-our-thursdays-is-missing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jasper-fforde/one-of-our-thursdays-is-missing" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 359, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jasper_Fforde#One_of_Our_Thursdays_is_Missing_(2011)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:01" }, { "id": "ea6ce1f8-fc65-4dbd-85d3-64eb673db4fd", "slug": "if-the-real", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jasper-fforde/something-rotten/if-the-real", "text": "If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher. Overlong, detailed to the point of distraction—and ultimately, without a major resolution.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jasper Fforde", "slug": "jasper-fforde", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jasper-fforde" }, "book": { "title": "Something Rotten", "slug": "something-rotten", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jasper-fforde/something-rotten" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 76, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jasper_Fforde#Something_Rotten_(2004)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:00" }, { "id": "79ca6abf-de0b-4039-bfb1-5758150546b8", "slug": "one-of-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-pullman/the-amber-spyglass-his-dark-materials-3/one-of-the", "text": "One of the ghosts — an old woman — beckoned, urging her to come close.\n\nThen she spoke, and Mary heard her say:\n\n\"Tell them stories. They need the truth. You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories.\"\n\nThat was all, and then she was gone. It was one of those moments when we suddenly recall a dream that we’ve unaccountably forgotten, and back in a flood comes all the emotion we felt in our sleep. It was the dream she’d tried to describe to Atal, the night picture; but as Mary tried to find it again, it dissolved and drifted apart, just as these presences did in the open air. The dream was gone.\n\nAll that was left was the sweetness of that feeling, and the injunction to tell them stories.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Philip Pullman", "slug": "philip-pullman", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-pullman" }, "book": { "title": "The Amber Spyglass: His Dark Materials 3", "slug": "the-amber-spyglass-his-dark-materials-3", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-pullman/the-amber-spyglass-his-dark-materials-3" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "truth", "slug": "truth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/truth" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philip_Pullman#The_Amber_Spyglass_(2000)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:38" }, { "id": "eda08a39-291e-4c7a-9ba0-3a8b5895116b", "slug": "as-for-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-jose-farmer/the-dark-design/as-for-the", "text": "As for the Bible, it was a book, and all books told the truth in the sense that their authors believed they were writing a kind of truth.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Philip José Farmer", "slug": "philip-jose-farmer", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-jose-farmer" }, "book": { "title": "The Dark Design", "slug": "the-dark-design", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-jose-farmer/the-dark-design" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 265, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "truth", "slug": "truth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/truth" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philip_Jos%C3%A9_Farmer#The_Dark_Design_(1977)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:31" }, { "id": "fa4a44d3-0227-49d1-9d4e-6258e77c7490", "slug": "in-some-traditionalist", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-eagleton/after-theory/in-some-traditionalist", "text": "\"In some traditionalist universities not long ago, you could not research on authors who were still alive. This was a great incentive to slip a knife between their ribs one foggy evening, or a remarkable test of patience if your chosen novelist was in rude health and only 34\".", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Terry Eagleton", "slug": "terry-eagleton", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-eagleton" }, "book": { "title": "After Theory", "slug": "after-theory", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-eagleton/after-theory" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Terry_Eagleton#After_Theory_(2003)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:11" }, { "id": "36d0c328-a7b4-4381-9ba0-a64848ccef15", "slug": "faith-is-for", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/madeleine-lengle/the-rock-that-is-higher/faith-is-for", "text": "Faith is for the part of the story that superficially isn’t believable.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Madeleine L’Engle", "slug": "madeleine-lengle", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/madeleine-lengle" }, "book": { "title": "The Rock That Is Higher", "slug": "the-rock-that-is-higher", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/madeleine-lengle/the-rock-that-is-higher" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "faith", "slug": "faith", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/faith" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Madeleine_L'Engle#The_Rock_that_Is_Higher_(1993)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:09" }, { "id": "53a6e9cc-b049-468a-8a2a-41beb06a7fde", "slug": "how-can-one", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ian-mcewan/sweet-tooth/how-can-one", "text": "How can one understand the inner life of a character, real or fictional, without knowing the state of her finances?", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ian McEwan", "slug": "ian-mcewan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ian-mcewan" }, "book": { "title": "Sweet Tooth", "slug": "sweet-tooth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ian-mcewan/sweet-tooth" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 42, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "money", "slug": "money", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/money" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ian_McEwan#Sweet_Tooth_(2012)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:00" }, { "id": "feab5ff5-850b-4b15-8205-b4f948bfb63d", "slug": "it-is-one", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/brown/it-is-one", "text": "It is one thing to know your author-man or woman or gay or black or paraplegic or president. It is another thing to choose only man or woman or et cetera, as the only quality of voice empowered to address you, as the only class of sensibility or experience able to understand you, or that you are able to understand.\n\nHow a society orders its bookshelves is as telling as the books a society writes and reads. American bookshelves of the twenty-first century describe fractiousness, reduction, hurt. Books are isolated from one another, like gardenias or peaches, lest they bruise or become bruised, or, worse, consort, confuse. If a man in a wheelchair writes his life, his book will be parked in a blue-crossed zone: \"Self-Help\" or \"Health.\" There is no shelf for bitterness. No shelf for redemption. The professor of Romance languages at Dresden, a convert to Protestantism, was tortured by the Nazis as a Jew — only that — a Jew. His book, published sixty years after the events it recounts, is shelved in my neighborhood bookstore as \"Judaica.\" There is no shelf for irony.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Richard Rodriguez", "slug": "richard-rodriguez", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez" }, "book": { "title": "Brown", "slug": "brown", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/brown" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "identity", "slug": "identity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/identity" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Rodriguez#Brown_:_The_Last_Discovery_of_America_(2003)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:47" }, { "id": "4d6bb7b2-e615-4737-9752-efab26ba2297", "slug": "books-should-confuse", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/brown/books-should-confuse", "text": "Books should confuse. Literature abhors the typical. Literature flows to the particular, the mundane, the greasiness of paper, the taste of warm beer, the smell of onion or quince. Auden has a line: \"Ports have names they call the sea.\" Just so will literature describe life familiarly, regionally, in terms life is accustomed to use — high or low matters not. Literature cannot by this impulse betray the grandeur of its subject — there is only one subject: What it feels like to be alive. Nothing is irrelevant. Nothing is typical.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Richard Rodriguez", "slug": "richard-rodriguez", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez" }, "book": { "title": "Brown", "slug": "brown", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/brown" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Rodriguez#Brown_:_The_Last_Discovery_of_America_(2003)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:47" }, { "id": "b73c25b8-5842-4964-90b8-10c2a192b62b", "slug": "all-true-stories", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/matthew-stover/blade-of-tyshalle/all-true-stories", "text": "\"All true stories end in death.\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Matthew Stover", "slug": "matthew-stover", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/matthew-stover" }, "book": { "title": "Blade of Tyshalle", "slug": "blade-of-tyshalle", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/matthew-stover/blade-of-tyshalle" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 380, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "death", "slug": "death", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/death" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Matthew_Stover#Blade_of_Tyshalle_(2001)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:44" }, { "id": "52de79f4-e580-49e6-9220-863a3c31a065", "slug": "fairy-tales-simple-stories", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/matthew-stover/heroes-die/fairy-tales-simple-stories", "text": "Fairy tales--simple stories for simple minds, a breath of air to cool brows overheated by the complexities of real life.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Matthew Stover", "slug": "matthew-stover", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/matthew-stover" }, "book": { "title": "Heroes Die", "slug": "heroes-die", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/matthew-stover/heroes-die" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Matthew_Stover#Heroes_Die_(1998)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:44" }, { "id": "ccf22805-fe12-4fc7-ac28-ef3593976ef9", "slug": "novelists-should-never", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charlotte-bronte/the-professor/novelists-should-never", "text": "Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Charlotte Brontë", "slug": "charlotte-bronte", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charlotte-bronte" }, "book": { "title": "The Professor", "slug": "the-professor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charlotte-bronte/the-professor" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charlotte_Bront%C3%AB#The_Professor_(1857)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:43" }, { "id": "d5e3650a-3c79-4304-951d-c69f0132633d", "slug": "life-doesnt-have", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/v-s-naipaul/half-a-life/life-doesnt-have", "text": "Life doesn't have a neat beginning and a tidy end, life is always going on. You should begin in the middle and end in the middle, and it should be all there.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "V. S. Naipaul", "slug": "v-s-naipaul", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/v-s-naipaul" }, "book": { "title": "Half a Life", "slug": "half-a-life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/v-s-naipaul/half-a-life" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/V._S._Naipaul#Half_a_Life_(2001)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:36" }, { "id": "d3a7b4ba-b378-4737-9b2a-1ac354163fc9", "slug": "i-explained-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/azar-nafisi/reading-lolita-in-tehran/i-explained-that", "text": "I explained that most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable. I told my students I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy, made them look around and consider the world, like Alice in Wonderland, through different eyes.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Azar Nafisi", "slug": "azar-nafisi", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/azar-nafisi" }, "book": { "title": "Reading Lolita in Tehran", "slug": "reading-lolita-in-tehran", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/azar-nafisi/reading-lolita-in-tehran" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "point of view", "slug": "point-of-view", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/point-of-view" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Azar_Nafisi#Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran_(2003)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:27" }, { "id": "b80a28e4-28f3-46be-beb3-dcfe64710dc4", "slug": "empathy-lies-at-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/azar-nafisi/reading-lolita-in-tehran/empathy-lies-at-the", "text": "Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby, like so many other great novels — the biggest sin is to be blind to others' problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Azar Nafisi", "slug": "azar-nafisi", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/azar-nafisi" }, "book": { "title": "Reading Lolita in Tehran", "slug": "reading-lolita-in-tehran", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/azar-nafisi/reading-lolita-in-tehran" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "empathy", "slug": "empathy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/empathy" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Azar_Nafisi#Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran_(2003)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:27" }, { "id": "b691f822-f84c-46cf-a960-2660bac5f32a", "slug": "do-not-under", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/azar-nafisi/reading-lolita-in-tehran/do-not-under", "text": "Do not, under any circumstances belittle a works of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Azar Nafisi", "slug": "azar-nafisi", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/azar-nafisi" }, "book": { "title": "Reading Lolita in Tehran", "slug": "reading-lolita-in-tehran", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/azar-nafisi/reading-lolita-in-tehran" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "truth", "slug": "truth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/truth" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Azar_Nafisi#Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran_(2003)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:27" }, { "id": "b033ac4a-213d-4354-9b69-8079811ea47b", "slug": "a-great-novel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/azar-nafisi/reading-lolita-in-tehran/a-great-novel", "text": "A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Azar Nafisi", "slug": "azar-nafisi", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/azar-nafisi" }, "book": { "title": "Reading Lolita in Tehran", "slug": "reading-lolita-in-tehran", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/azar-nafisi/reading-lolita-in-tehran" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "morality", "slug": "morality", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Azar_Nafisi#Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran_(2003)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:27" }, { "id": "5ba66fa5-e5a9-4a9b-a5e1-5ca5d2ac7e9e", "slug": "yes-the-novel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/azar-nafisi/reading-lolita-in-tehran/yes-the-novel", "text": "Yes, the novel is about concrete living relationships, a man's love for a woman, a woman's betrayal of that love. But it is also about wealth, its great attraction as well as its destructive power, the carelessness that comes with it, and, yes, it is about the American dream, a dream of power and wealth, the beguiling light of Daisy's house and the port of entry to America. It is also about loss, about the perishability of dreams once they are transformed into hard reality. 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You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Yann Martel", "slug": "yann-martel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/yann-martel" }, "book": { "title": "Life Of Pi", "slug": "life-of-pi", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/yann-martel/life-of-pi" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 336, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "imagination", "slug": "imagination", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/imagination" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yann_Martel#Life_of_Pi_(2001)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:03" }, { "id": "e57ba883-145f-4dff-adc2-73ed5b2b292c", "slug": "i-sit-with", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/web-dubois/the-souls-of-black-folk/i-sit-with", "text": "I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "W.E.B. Dubois", "slug": "web-dubois", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/web-dubois" }, "book": { "title": "The Souls of Black Folk", "slug": "the-souls-of-black-folk", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/web-dubois/the-souls-of-black-folk" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "reading", "slug": "reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reading" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "racism", "slug": "racism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/racism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois#The_Souls_of_Black_Folk_(1903)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:02" }, { "id": "b5fe15c8-67f5-4dea-8daa-f20e4a67bca1", "slug": "a-french-or-english", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/elizabeth-costello/a-french-or-english", "text": "A French or English writer has thousands of years of written tradition behind him…We on the other hand are heirs to an oral tradition.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "J. M. Coetzee", "slug": "j-m-coetzee", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee" }, "book": { "title": "Elizabeth Costello", "slug": "elizabeth-costello", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/elizabeth-costello" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "tradition", "slug": "tradition", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/tradition" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._M._Coetzee#Elizabeth_Costello_(2003)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:32" }, { "id": "5b7ff8a0-d575-46cc-86b2-87cdce4b142e", "slug": "but-if-he-is-going", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/youth/but-if-he-is-going", "text": "But if he is going to write prose then he may have to go the whole hog and become a Jamesian. Henry James shows one how to rise above mere nationality. [...] People in James do not have to pay the rent; they certainly do not have to hold down jobs; all they are required to do is to have super-subtle conversations whose effect is to bring about tiny shifts of power, shifts so minute as to be invisible to all but the practised eye. When enough such shifts have taken place, the balance of power between the personages of the story is (Voilà!) revealed to have suddenly and irreversibly changed. And that is that: the story has fulfilled its charge and can be brought to an end. — Chapter 8, page 64.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "J. M. Coetzee", "slug": "j-m-coetzee", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee" }, "book": { "title": "Youth", "slug": "youth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/youth" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._M._Coetzee#Youth:_Scenes_from_Provincial_Life_II_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:32" }, { "id": "7b3e6f88-039d-4b58-a009-f0adce8bab9b", "slug": "i-am-a-free", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/foe/i-am-a-free", "text": "I am a free woman who asserts her freedom by telling her story.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "J. M. Coetzee", "slug": "j-m-coetzee", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee" }, "book": { "title": "Foe", "slug": "foe", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/foe" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "freedom", "slug": "freedom", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom" }, { "name": "women", "slug": "women", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/women" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._M._Coetzee#Foe_(1986)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:30" }, { "id": "6875b18b-6a55-4c17-98bd-474477084a38", "slug": "we-can-bring", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/foe/we-can-bring", "text": "We can bring [the island] to life only by setting it within a larger story.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "J. M. Coetzee", "slug": "j-m-coetzee", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee" }, "book": { "title": "Foe", "slug": "foe", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/foe" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._M._Coetzee#Foe_(1986)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:30" }, { "id": "fda6f5f3-ee2e-41d5-a30a-9a15e55a4dea", "slug": "there-is-in-short", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/shashi-tharoor/the-great-indian-novel/there-is-in-short", "text": "There is, in short no end to the story of life. There are merely pauses. The end is the arbitrary intervention of the teller, but there can be no finality about the choice. Today’s end is, after all tomorrow’s beginning.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Shashi Tharoor", "slug": "shashi-tharoor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/shashi-tharoor" }, "book": { "title": "The Great Indian Novel", "slug": "the-great-indian-novel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/shashi-tharoor/the-great-indian-novel" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Shashi_Tharoor#The_Great_Indian_Novel_(1989)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:29" }, { "id": "ea891b9f-1245-42be-97d7-e7b34468d0f4", "slug": "the-great-irreplaceable", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/amitav-ghosh/the-great-derangement-from-bestselling-author-and-winner-of-the-2018-jnanpith-award/the-great-irreplaceable", "text": "the great, irreplaceable potentiality of fiction is that it makes possible the imagining of possibilities.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Amitav Ghosh", "slug": "amitav-ghosh", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/amitav-ghosh" }, "book": { "title": "The Great Derangement: From bestselling author and winner of the 2018 Jnanpith Award", "slug": "the-great-derangement-from-bestselling-author-and-winner-of-the-2018-jnanpith-award", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/amitav-ghosh/the-great-derangement-from-bestselling-author-and-winner-of-the-2018-jnanpith-award" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "imagination", "slug": "imagination", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/imagination" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Amitav_Ghosh#The_Great_Derangement:_Climate_Change_and_the_Unthinkable_(2016)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:17" }, { "id": "7374a3d4-66cf-4cb1-a098-7d07b498b62c", "slug": "he-was-just", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/joseph-conrad/heart-of-darkness/he-was-just", "text": "He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream — making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Joseph Conrad", "slug": "joseph-conrad", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/joseph-conrad" }, "book": { "title": "Heart of Darkness", "slug": "heart-of-darkness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/joseph-conrad/heart-of-darkness" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "dreams", "slug": "dreams", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/dreams" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness#Part_I", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:13" }, { "id": "1037f9ab-94f6-4444-95b2-013a332744cc", "slug": "the-yarns-of-seamen", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/joseph-conrad/heart-of-darkness/the-yarns-of-seamen", "text": "The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Joseph Conrad", "slug": "joseph-conrad", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/joseph-conrad" }, "book": { "title": "Heart of Darkness", "slug": "heart-of-darkness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/joseph-conrad/heart-of-darkness" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness#Part_I", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:12" }, { "id": "a37c6469-0e31-4adb-bfd2-ad576fda9fbf", "slug": "digressions-incontestably-are", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/laurence-sterne/the-life-and-opinions-of-tristram-shandy-gentleman/digressions-incontestably-are", "text": "Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; —& they are the life, the soul of reading; — take them out of this book for instance, — you might as well take the book along with them.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Laurence Sterne", "slug": "laurence-sterne", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/laurence-sterne" }, "book": { "title": "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman", "slug": "the-life-and-opinions-of-tristram-shandy-gentleman", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/laurence-sterne/the-life-and-opinions-of-tristram-shandy-gentleman" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "reading", "slug": "reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reading" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Laurence_Sterne#The_Life_and_Opinions_of_Tristram_Shandy,_Gentleman_(1760-1767)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:07" }, { "id": "2de1d1ae-1af1-488a-a0c1-684fb9e579f3", "slug": "im-looking-for", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-robbins/fierce-invalids-home-from-hot-climates/im-looking-for", "text": "\"I'm looking for the novelists whose writing is an extension of their intellect rather than an extension of their neurosis.\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Tom Robbins", "slug": "tom-robbins", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-robbins" }, "book": { "title": "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates", "slug": "fierce-invalids-home-from-hot-climates", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-robbins/fierce-invalids-home-from-hot-climates" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tom_Robbins#Fierce_Invalids_Home_from_Hot_Climates_(2000)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:39" }, { "id": "1079a43c-7b89-4261-98bb-f5802cfdf6be", "slug": "the-public-of-this", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mikhail-lermontov/a-hero-of-our-time/the-public-of-this", "text": "The public of this country is so youthful, not to say simple-minded, that it cannot understand the meaning of a fable unless the moral is set forth at the end. Unable to see a joke, insensible to irony, it has, in a word, been badly brought up. It has not yet learned that in a decent book, as in decent society, open invective can have no place; that our present-day civilisation has invented a keener weapon, none the less deadly for being almost invisible, which, under the cloak of flattery, strikes with sure and irresistible effect.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Mikhail Lérmontov", "slug": "mikhail-lermontov", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mikhail-lermontov" }, "book": { "title": "A Hero of Our Time", "slug": "a-hero-of-our-time", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mikhail-lermontov/a-hero-of-our-time" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "irony", "slug": "irony", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/irony" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mikhail_Lermontov#A_Hero_of_Our_Time_(1840%3B_rev._1841)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:25" }, { "id": "fbcceecf-0ad7-46c1-9edb-9cb72e08c60b", "slug": "the-trouble-with", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/martin-amis/experience/the-trouble-with", "text": "The trouble with life (the novelist will feel) is its amorphousness, its ridiculous fluidity. Look at it: thinly plotted, largely themeless, sentimental and ineluctably trite. The dialogue is poor, or at least violently uneven. The twists are either predictable or sensationalist. And it's always the same beginning; and the same ending ...", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Martin Amis", "slug": "martin-amis", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/martin-amis" }, "book": { "title": "Experience", "slug": "experience", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/martin-amis/experience" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Martin_Amis#Experience_(2000)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:13" }, { "id": "1bd0ed2f-d4aa-4f85-899e-c5dfe85c387f", "slug": "bujak-spoke-of-einstein", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/martin-amis/einsteins-monsters/bujak-spoke-of-einstein", "text": "Bujak spoke of Einstein as if he were God's literary critic, God being a poet. I, more stolidly, tend to suspect that God is a novelist — a garrulous and deeply unwholesome one too.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Martin Amis", "slug": "martin-amis", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/martin-amis" }, "book": { "title": "Einstein's Monsters", "slug": "einsteins-monsters", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/martin-amis/einsteins-monsters" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "god", "slug": "god", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/god" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Martin_Amis#Einstein's_Monsters_(1987)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:12" }, { "id": "6cb662c7-c27b-4723-83c3-1334b1a3a258", "slug": "a-novel-is-an-impression", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-hardy/tess-of-the-durbervilles/a-novel-is-an-impression", "text": "A novel is an impression, not an argument.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Thomas Hardy", "slug": "thomas-hardy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-hardy" }, "book": { "title": "Tess of the D'Urbervilles", "slug": "tess-of-the-durbervilles", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-hardy/tess-of-the-durbervilles" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy#Tess_of_the_d'Urbervilles_(1891)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:02" }, { "id": "6711cafc-198a-428d-91c7-d94357d11ced", "slug": "a-lawyer-without", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-scott/guy-mannering/a-lawyer-without", "text": "A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Walter Scott", "slug": "walter-scott", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-scott" }, "book": { "title": "Guy Mannering", "slug": "guy-mannering", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-scott/guy-mannering" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "history", "slug": "history", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "lawyers", "slug": "lawyers", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/lawyers" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Walter_Scott#Guy_Mannering_(1815)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:49" }, { "id": "db6229bf-1846-45c6-bf80-edeca7c6a474", "slug": "most-first-novels", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clive-james/unreliable-memoirs/most-first-novels", "text": "Most first novels are disguised autobiographies. This autobiography is a disguised novel.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Clive James", "slug": "clive-james", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clive-james" }, "book": { "title": "Unreliable Memoirs", "slug": "unreliable-memoirs", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clive-james/unreliable-memoirs" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 9, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clive_James#Unreliable_Memoirs_(1980)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:47" }, { "id": "cefbc42e-042f-4f78-bfcc-68b114157070", "slug": "herzen-was-closer", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clive-james/unreliable-memoirs/herzen-was-closer", "text": "Herzen was closer to the truth when he said that every memory calls up a dozen others. The real miracle of Proust is the discipline with which he stemmed the flow. Everything is a Madeleine.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Clive James", "slug": "clive-james", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clive-james" }, "book": { "title": "Unreliable Memoirs", "slug": "unreliable-memoirs", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clive-james/unreliable-memoirs" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 56, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "memory", "slug": "memory", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/memory" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clive_James#Unreliable_Memoirs_(1980)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:47" }, { "id": "8daff516-57ae-45f8-be62-72e5f5cc7805", "slug": "there-isnt-any", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/slaughterhouse-five/there-isnt-any", "text": "There isn’t any particular relationship between the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kurt Vonnegut", "slug": "kurt-vonnegut", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut" }, "book": { "title": "Slaughterhouse-Five", "slug": "slaughterhouse-five", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/slaughterhouse-five" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 88, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse-Five#Chapter_5", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:45" }, { "id": "40160bb1-d8e3-46f3-baf0-babe2f24cc92", "slug": "eliot-rosewater-said", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/slaughterhouse-five/eliot-rosewater-said", "text": "[Eliot] Rosewater said an interesting thing to Billy [Pilgrim] one time … He said that everything there was to know about life is in \"The Brothers Karamazov,\" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. \"But that isn't enough anymore,\" said Rosewater. (p. 101)", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kurt Vonnegut", "slug": "kurt-vonnegut", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut" }, "book": { "title": "Slaughterhouse-Five", "slug": "slaughterhouse-five", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/slaughterhouse-five" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse-Five#Chapter_5", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:45" }, { "id": "17f4e672-2b66-4183-bb47-bd4a0abf693c", "slug": "it-is-so-short", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/slaughterhouse-five/it-is-so-short", "text": "It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.\n\nAnd what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like \"Poo-tee-weet?\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kurt Vonnegut", "slug": "kurt-vonnegut", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut" }, "book": { "title": "Slaughterhouse-Five", "slug": "slaughterhouse-five", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/slaughterhouse-five" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 19, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "death", "slug": "death", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/death" }, { "name": "war", "slug": "war", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/war" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse-Five#Chapter_1", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:45" }, { "id": "3741f272-0ba1-411a-90be-e944bc389a7e", "slug": "the-person-be-it-gentleman", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-austen/northanger-abbey/the-person-be-it-gentleman", "text": "\"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.\" - Henry Tilney, in: en:s:Northanger Abbey/Chapter 14.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jane Austen", "slug": "jane-austen", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-austen" }, "book": { "title": "Northanger Abbey", "slug": "northanger-abbey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-austen/northanger-abbey" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "reading", "slug": "reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reading" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Northanger_Abbey#Chapter_14", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:44" }, { "id": "051e6a14-5695-4219-9ebb-74aefb87f886", "slug": "let-us-leave", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-austen/northanger-abbey/let-us-leave", "text": "Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens — there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. \"I am no novel-reader — I seldom look into novels — Do not imagine that I often read novels — It is really very well for a novel.\" Such is the common cant. \"And what are you reading, Miss — ?\" \"Oh! It is only a novel!\" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. \"It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda\"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jane Austen", "slug": "jane-austen", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-austen" }, "book": { "title": "Northanger Abbey", "slug": "northanger-abbey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-austen/northanger-abbey" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Northanger_Abbey#Chapter_3", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:43" }, { "id": "db2af714-c104-4c23-b842-70142f34b44e", "slug": "i-am-learning", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-gissing/new-grub-street/i-am-learning", "text": "I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets; when one kind of goods begins to go off slackly, he is ready with something new and appetising. He knows perfectly all the possible sources of income. Whatever he has to sell he'll get payment for it from all sorts of various quarters; none of your unpractical selling for a lump sum to a middleman who will make six distinct profits.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "George Gissing", "slug": "george-gissing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-gissing" }, "book": { "title": "New Grub Street", "slug": "new-grub-street", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-gissing/new-grub-street" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 8, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "trade", "slug": "trade", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/trade" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Gissing#New_Grub_Street:_A_Novel_(1891)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:27" }, { "id": "a1136730-bc0a-4cc7-a49e-fc8432a78873", "slug": "i-maintain-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-gissing/new-grub-street/i-maintain-that", "text": "I maintain that we people of brains are justified in supplying the mob with the food it likes. We are not geniuses, and if we sit down in a spirit of long-eared gravity we shall produce only commonplace stuff. Let us use our wits to earn money, and make the best we can of our lives. If only I had the skill, I would produce novels out-trashing the trashiest that ever sold fifty thousand copies. But it needs skill, mind you; and to deny it is a gross error of the literary pedants. To please the vulgar you must, one way or another, incarnate the genius of vulgarity.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "George Gissing", "slug": "george-gissing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-gissing" }, "book": { "title": "New Grub Street", "slug": "new-grub-street", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-gissing/new-grub-street" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 17, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "money", "slug": "money", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/money" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Gissing#New_Grub_Street:_A_Novel_(1891)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:27" }, { "id": "9558f79d-d402-4f3b-bdee-9b71717e6e11", "slug": "the-english-language", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/camille-paglia/sexual-personae/the-english-language", "text": "The English language was created by poets, a five-hundred year enterprise of emotion and metaphor, the richest dialogue in world literature. French rhetorical models are too narrow for the English tradition. Most pernicious of French imports is the notion that there is no person behind a text. Is there anything more affected, aggressive, and relentlessly concrete than a Parisian intellectual behind his/her turgid text? The Parisian is a provincial when he pretends to speak for the universe.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Camille Paglia", "slug": "camille-paglia", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/camille-paglia" }, "book": { "title": "Sexual Personae", "slug": "sexual-personae", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/camille-paglia/sexual-personae" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 34, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "language", "slug": "language", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/language" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Camille_Paglia#Sexual_Personae:_Art_and_Decadence_from_Nefertiti_to_Emily_Dickinson_(1990)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:17" }, { "id": "74c3355d-e66f-49a8-94b9-e862f12c73ed", "slug": "many-writers-lay", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/nathaniel-hawthorne/the-house-of-the-seven-gables/many-writers-lay", "text": "Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works. Not to be deficient in this particular, the author has provided himself with a moral, — the truth, namely, that the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief; and he would feel it a singular gratification if this romance might effectually convince mankind — or, indeed, any one man — of the folly of tumbling down an avalanche of ill-gotten gold, or real estate, on the heads of an unfortunate posterity, thereby to maim and crush them, until the accumulated mass shall be scattered abroad in its original atoms. In good faith, however, he is not sufficiently imaginative to flatter himself with the slightest hope of this kind. When romances do really teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtile process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod, — or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly, — thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Nathaniel Hawthorne", "slug": "nathaniel-hawthorne", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/nathaniel-hawthorne" }, "book": { "title": "The House of the Seven Gables", "slug": "the-house-of-the-seven-gables", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/nathaniel-hawthorne/the-house-of-the-seven-gables" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "morality", "slug": "morality", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Hawthorne#The_House_of_the_Seven_Gables_(1851)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:07" }, { "id": "2a420e17-9fb0-4a06-9fa0-8cd105f314ad", "slug": "it-may-happen", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/evelyn-waugh/the-ordeal-of-gilbert-pinfold/it-may-happen", "text": "It may happen in the next hundred years that the English novelists of the present day will come to be valued as we now value the artists and craftsmen of the late eighteenth century.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Evelyn Waugh", "slug": "evelyn-waugh", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/evelyn-waugh" }, "book": { "title": "The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold", "slug": "the-ordeal-of-gilbert-pinfold", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/evelyn-waugh/the-ordeal-of-gilbert-pinfold" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Evelyn_Waugh#The_Ordeal_of_Gilbert_Pinfold_(1957)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:56" }, { "id": "f326a143-f6bf-44a4-aeaf-2de74c351af1", "slug": "what-can-place", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eudora-welty/on-writing/what-can-place", "text": "What can place not give? Theme. It can present theme, show it to the last detail — but place is forever illustrative: it is a picture of what man has done and imagined, it is his visible past, result. Human life is fiction’s only theme. (\"Place in Fiction\")", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Eudora Welty", "slug": "eudora-welty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eudora-welty" }, "book": { "title": "On Writing", "slug": "on-writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eudora-welty/on-writing" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eudora_Welty#On_Writing_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:48" }, { "id": "d17e896a-54a7-4816-ad5e-48d6c91dc61c", "slug": "great-fiction-shows", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eudora-welty/on-writing/great-fiction-shows", "text": "Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean. A good novel of any year can initiate us into our own new experience.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Eudora Welty", "slug": "eudora-welty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eudora-welty" }, "book": { "title": "On Writing", "slug": "on-writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eudora-welty/on-writing" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "emotions", "slug": "emotions", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/emotions" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eudora_Welty#%22Must_the_Novelist_Crusade%3F%22", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:48" }, { "id": "61e3d743-7efa-4947-9058-cf068935e9b3", "slug": "the-novelist-works", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eudora-welty/on-writing/the-novelist-works", "text": "The novelist works neither to correct nor to condone, not at all to comfort, but to make what's told alive.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Eudora Welty", "slug": "eudora-welty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eudora-welty" }, "book": { "title": "On Writing", "slug": "on-writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eudora-welty/on-writing" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eudora_Welty#%22Must_the_Novelist_Crusade%3F%22", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:48" }, { "id": "57d60ff6-2be8-4588-9e9a-4657bba9feb4", "slug": "i-have-changed", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/rita-mae-brown/starting-from-scratch/i-have-changed", "text": "I have changed my definition of tragedy. I now think tragedy is not foul deeds done to a person... but rather that tragedy is irresolvable conflict. Both sides/ideas are right. Plot involves fragmentary reality, and it might involve composite reality. Fragmentary reality is the view of the individual. Composite reality is the community or state view. Fragmentary reality is always set against composite reality. Virginia Woolf did this by creating fragmentary monologues and for a while this was all the rage in literature. She was a genius. In the hands of the merely talented it came off like gibberish.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Rita Mae Brown", "slug": "rita-mae-brown", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/rita-mae-brown" }, "book": { "title": "Starting from Scratch", "slug": "starting-from-scratch", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/rita-mae-brown/starting-from-scratch" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rita_Mae_Brown#Starting_from_Scratch_(1989)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:32" }, { "id": "f7b5eba9-acb3-433e-9c64-43de1d647139", "slug": "the-novel-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iris-murdoch/sartre/the-novel-the", "text": "The novel, the novel proper that is, is about people's treatment of each other, and so it is about human values.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Iris Murdoch", "slug": "iris-murdoch", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iris-murdoch" }, "book": { "title": "Sartre", "slug": "sartre", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iris-murdoch/sartre" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 138, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iris_Murdoch#Sartre:_Romantic_Rationalist_(1953)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:29" }, { "id": "b3b0dfd2-c7af-4bcb-8f73-c1d522a85557", "slug": "technically-our-novelists", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/on-moral-fiction/technically-our-novelists", "text": "Technically our novelists (for instance) are shrewd enough, and publishers and reviewers seem, as never before, eager to be of use. Nevertheless, wherever we look it's the same: commercial slickness, misplaced cleverness, posturing, wild floundering -- dullness. Though not widely advertised, this is general knowledge. When one talks with editors of serious fiction, they all sound the same: they speak of their pleasure and satisfaction in their work, but more often than not the editor cannot think, under the moment's pressure, of a single contemporary writer he really enjoys reading. Some deny, even publicly, that any first-rate American novelists now exist. The ordinary reader has been saying that for years...", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Gardner", "slug": "john-gardner", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner" }, "book": { "title": "On Moral Fiction", "slug": "on-moral-fiction", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/on-moral-fiction" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 56, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "criticism", "slug": "criticism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/criticism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gardner_(American_writer)#On_Moral_Fiction_(1977)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:27" }, { "id": "b09475d9-357f-4a84-add0-5d304793f8c0", "slug": "when-i-was", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-styron/darkness-visible/when-i-was", "text": "When I was a young writer there had been a stage where Camus, almost more than any other contemporary literary figure, radically set the tone for my own view of life and history. I read his novel The Stranger somewhat later than I should have — I was in my early thirties — but after finishing it I received the stab of recognition that proceeds from reading the work of a writer who has wedded moral passion to a style of great beauty and whose unblinking vision is capable of frightening the soul to its marrow. The cosmic loneliness of Meursault, the hero of that novel, so haunted me that when I set out to write The Confessions of Nat Turner I was impelled to use Camus’s device of having the story flow from the point of view of a narrator isolated in his jail cell during the hours before his execution. For me there was a spiritual connection between Meursault’s frigid solitude and the plight of Nat Turner — his rebel predecessor in history by a hundred years — likewise condemned and abandoned by man and God. Camus’s essay “Reflections on the Guillotine” is a virtually unique document, freighted with terrible and fiery logic; it is difficult to conceive of the most vengeful supporter of the death penalty retaining the same attitude after exposure to scathing truths expressed with such ardor and precision. I know my thinking was forever altered by that work, not only turning me around completely, convincing me of the essential barbarism of capital punishment, but establishing substantial claims on my conscience in regard to matters of responsibility at large. Camus was a great cleanser of my intellect, ridding me of countless sluggish ideas, and through some of the most unsettling pessimism I had ever encountered causing me to be aroused anew by life’s enigmatic promise.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "William Styron", "slug": "william-styron", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-styron" }, "book": { "title": "Darkness Visible", "slug": "darkness-visible", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-styron/darkness-visible" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "capital punishment", "slug": "capital-punishment", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/capital-punishment" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Styron#Darkness_Visible_(1990)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:27" }, { "id": "f92944f9-8ea9-4052-afef-51542fa60916", "slug": "it-often-seems", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-citadel-of-the-autarch/it-often-seems", "text": "It often seems to me that of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music; the rest, mercy, beauty, sleep, clean water and hot food [...] are all the work of the Increate. Thus, stories are small things indeed in the scheme of the universe, but it is hard not to love best what is our own.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Gene Wolfe", "slug": "gene-wolfe", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe" }, "book": { "title": "The Citadel of the Autarch", "slug": "the-citadel-of-the-autarch", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-citadel-of-the-autarch" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "music", "slug": "music", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/music" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_New_Sun#The_Citadel_of_the_Autarch_(1983)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:24" }, { "id": "f764400f-a1db-471a-9c3d-341ef5e7fe44", "slug": "bear-in-mind", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/nova/bear-in-mind", "text": "Bear in mind that the novel—no matter how intimate, psychological, or subjective—is always a historical projection of its own time.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Samuel R. Delany", "slug": "samuel-r-delany", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany" }, "book": { "title": "Nova", "slug": "nova", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/nova" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 116, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "history", "slug": "history", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_R._Delany#Nova_(1968)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:18" }, { "id": "ea11e99a-9913-4fb3-b86a-26dda7a7ea55", "slug": "i-was-born", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/nova/i-was-born", "text": "“I was born,” the Mouse said. “I must die. I am suffering. Help me. There, I just wrote your book for you.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Samuel R. Delany", "slug": "samuel-r-delany", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany" }, "book": { "title": "Nova", "slug": "nova", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/nova" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 156, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_R._Delany#Nova_(1968)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:18" }, { "id": "e1b69e5c-0faf-4943-90b4-71d29c689ba4", "slug": "there-are-three", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/nova/there-are-three", "text": "There are three types of actions: purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous. Characters, to be immediate and apprehensible, must be presented by all three.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Samuel R. Delany", "slug": "samuel-r-delany", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany" }, "book": { "title": "Nova", "slug": "nova", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/nova" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 166, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_R._Delany#Nova_(1968)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:18" }, { "id": "6797fe78-a469-41bc-bc66-8f951217a835", "slug": "heroes-in-books", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-trollope/framley-parsonage/heroes-in-books", "text": "Heroes in books should be so much better than heroes got up for the world's common wear and tear", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Anthony Trollope", "slug": "anthony-trollope", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-trollope" }, "book": { "title": "Framley Parsonage", "slug": "framley-parsonage", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-trollope/framley-parsonage" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anthony_Trollope#Framley_Parsonage_(1861)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:00" }, { "id": "136300b6-addd-45c9-8beb-3628136fef1b", "slug": "the-end-of-a-novel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-trollope/barchester-towers/the-end-of-a-novel", "text": "The end of a novel, like the end of a children's dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plums.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Anthony Trollope", "slug": "anthony-trollope", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-trollope" }, "book": { "title": "Barchester Towers", "slug": "barchester-towers", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-trollope/barchester-towers" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anthony_Trollope#Barchester_Towers_(1857)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:00" }, { "id": "f3cb65e2-722a-4256-8334-80b7e1036683", "slug": "there-is-no-happiness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-trollope/barchester-towers/there-is-no-happiness", "text": "There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Anthony Trollope", "slug": "anthony-trollope", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-trollope" }, "book": { "title": "Barchester Towers", "slug": "barchester-towers", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-trollope/barchester-towers" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "love", "slug": "love", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/love" }, { "name": "happiness", "slug": "happiness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/happiness" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anthony_Trollope#Barchester_Towers_(1857)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:59" }, { "id": "cbcb92f3-2312-468e-92a0-6bd9ad36db21", "slug": "in-the-form", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/in-the-form", "text": "In the form of the oeuvre, the actual circumstances are placed in another dimension where the given reality shows itself as that which it is. Thus it tells the truth about itself; its language ceases to be that of deception, ignorance, and submission. Fiction calls the facts by their name and their reign collapses; fiction subverts everyday experience and shows it to be mutilated and false.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Herbert Marcuse", "slug": "herbert-marcuse", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse" }, "book": { "title": "One-Dimensional Man", "slug": "one-dimensional-man", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 62, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "truth", "slug": "truth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/truth" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "b576558e-497d-4248-b727-47411fecf719", "slug": "they-great-works", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/they-great-works", "text": "They [great works of literature] are invalidated not because of their literary obsolescence. Some of these images pertain to contemporary literature and survive in its most advanced creations. What has been invalidated is their subversive force, their destructive content—their truth. In this transformation, they find their home in everyday living. The alien and alienating oeuvres of intellectual culture become familiar goods and services. Is their massive reproduction and consumption only a change in quantity, namely, growing appreciation and understanding, democratization of culture? The truth of literature and art has always been granted (if it was granted at all) as one of a “higher” order, which should not and indeed did not disturb the order of business. What has changed in the contemporary period is the difference between the two orders and their truths. The absorbent power of society depletes the artistic dimension by assimilating its antagonistic contents. In the realm of culture, the new totalitarianism manifests itself precisely in a harmonizing pluralism, where the most contradictory works and truths peacefully coexist in indifference. Prior to the advent of this cultural reconciliation, literature and art were essentially alienation, sustaining and protecting the contradiction—the unhappy consciousness of the divided world, the defeated possibilities, the hopes unfulfilled, and the promises betrayed. They were a rational, cognitive force, revealing a dimension of man and nature which was repressed and repelled in reality.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Herbert Marcuse", "slug": "herbert-marcuse", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse" }, "book": { "title": "One-Dimensional Man", "slug": "one-dimensional-man", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 60, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "culture", "slug": "culture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/culture" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "c688dd3e-9fbf-4ab1-b3d5-539bf3858a3d", "slug": "for-that-is-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/norman-mailer/the-naked-and-the-dead/for-that-is-the", "text": "For that is the genius of the old man — Tolstoy teaches us that compassion is of value and enriches our life only when compassion is severe, which is to say when we can perceive everything that is good and bad about a character but are still able to feel that the sum of us as human beings is probably a little more good than awful … That fine edge in Tolstoy, the knowledge that compassion is valueless without severity (for otherwise it cannot defend itself against sentimentality), gave The Naked and the Dead whatever enduring virtue it may possess and catapulted the amateur who wrote it into the grim ranks of those successful literary men and women who are obliged to become professional in order to survive …", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Norman Mailer", "slug": "norman-mailer", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/norman-mailer" }, "book": { "title": "The Naked and the Dead", "slug": "the-naked-and-the-dead", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/norman-mailer/the-naked-and-the-dead" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "compassion", "slug": "compassion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/compassion" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Norman_Mailer#The_Naked_and_the_Dead_(1948)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:12" }, { "id": "007beb41-0934-449a-8979-0e6cf239bcda", "slug": "theres-the-story", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-atwood/maddaddam/theres-the-story", "text": "There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Margaret Atwood", "slug": "margaret-atwood", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-atwood" }, "book": { "title": "MaddAddam", "slug": "maddaddam", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-atwood/maddaddam" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "truth", "slug": "truth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/truth" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Margaret_Atwood#MaddAddam_(2013)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:12" }, { "id": "c480cc95-0579-4817-829b-1c70dc381f6d", "slug": "all-stories-are", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-atwood/the-blind-assassin/all-stories-are", "text": "All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. …Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Margaret Atwood", "slug": "margaret-atwood", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-atwood" }, "book": { "title": "The Blind Assassin", "slug": "the-blind-assassin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-atwood/the-blind-assassin" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Margaret_Atwood#The_Blind_Assassin_(2000)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:10" }, { "id": "f8cd1c3f-f157-4303-8a5e-2733d1459476", "slug": "its-not-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/norwegian-wood/its-not-that", "text": "\"It's not that I don't believe in contemporary literature, but I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short.\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Haruki Murakami", "slug": "haruki-murakami", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami" }, "book": { "title": "Norwegian Wood", "slug": "norwegian-wood", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/norwegian-wood" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "reading", "slug": "reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reading" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Norwegian_Wood_(novel)#Chapter_Three", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:02" }, { "id": "976483f3-895d-4d34-90e3-93032ac435e8", "slug": "ive-read-rudin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/hard-boiled-wonderland-and-the-end-of-the-world/ive-read-rudin", "text": "I’ve read Rudin before, but that was fifteen years ago in university. Rereading it now, lying all bandaged up, sipping my whiskey in bed in the afternoon, I felt new sympathy for the protagonist Rudin. I almost never identify with anybody in Dostoyevsky, but the characters in Turgenev’s old-fashioned novels are such victims of circumstance, I jump right in. I have a thing about losers. Flaws in oneself open you up to others flaws. Not that Dostoyevsky’s characters don’t generate pathos, but they’re flawed in a way that don’t come across as faults.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Haruki Murakami", "slug": "haruki-murakami", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami" }, "book": { "title": "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World", "slug": "hard-boiled-wonderland-and-the-end-of-the-world", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/hard-boiled-wonderland-and-the-end-of-the-world" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Haruki_Murakami#Hard-Boiled_Wonderland_and_the_End_of_the_World_(1985)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:01" }, { "id": "628561ff-1e81-49b3-b399-2defba10d8a8", "slug": "war-as-a-moral", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/a-wizard-of-earthsea/war-as-a-moral", "text": "War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to 'a war against' whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the “right” side and therefore will win. Right makes might.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ursula K. Le Guin", "slug": "ursula-k-le-guin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin" }, "book": { "title": "A Wizard of Earthsea", "slug": "a-wizard-of-earthsea", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/a-wizard-of-earthsea" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "war", "slug": "war", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/war" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin#A_Wizard_of_Earthsea_(1968)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:55" }, { "id": "696bdb26-0b27-4339-8765-cc9b5516afc8", "slug": "unless-physical-action", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-winds-twelve-quarters/unless-physical-action", "text": "Unless physical action reflects psychic action, unless the deeds express the person, I get very bored with adventure stories; often it seems that the more action there is, the less happens.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ursula K. Le Guin", "slug": "ursula-k-le-guin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin" }, "book": { "title": "The Wind’s Twelve Quarters", "slug": "the-winds-twelve-quarters", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-winds-twelve-quarters" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 166, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin#The_Wind%E2%80%99s_Twelve_Quarters_(1975)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:50" }, { "id": "e9d6a6b1-79b4-475d-98cc-a9696caffb61", "slug": "happy-ending-must", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/salman-rushdie/haroun-and-the-sea-of-stories/happy-ending-must", "text": "Happy ending must come at the end of something. If they happen in the middle of the story or adventure, or the like, all they do is cheer things up for a while.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Salman Rushdie", "slug": "salman-rushdie", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/salman-rushdie" }, "book": { "title": "Haroun and the Sea of Stories", "slug": "haroun-and-the-sea-of-stories", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/salman-rushdie/haroun-and-the-sea-of-stories" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "happiness", "slug": "happiness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/happiness" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Haroun_and_the_Sea_of_Stories", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:20" }, { "id": "a93e4a74-5870-4c18-b0ab-f4846551f1fb", "slug": "the-attempt-to-devote", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/vaclav-havel/disturbing-the-peace/the-attempt-to-devote", "text": "The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and … often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Václav Havel", "slug": "vaclav-havel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/vaclav-havel" }, "book": { "title": "Disturbing the Peace", "slug": "disturbing-the-peace", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/vaclav-havel/disturbing-the-peace" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/V%C3%A1clav_Havel#Disturbing_the_Peace_(1986)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:56" }, { "id": "cc39a6b4-f695-434f-a88d-e84673e50779", "slug": "interpretation-thus-presupposes", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-sontag/against-interpretation-and-other-essays/interpretation-thus-presupposes", "text": "Interpretation thus presupposes a discrepancy between the clear meaning of the text and the demands of (later) readers. It seeks to resolve that discrepancy. The situation is that for some reason a text has become unacceptable; yet it cannot be discarded. Interpretation is a radical strategy for conserving an old text, which is thought too precious to repudiate, by revamping it. The interpreter, without actually erasing or rewriting the text, is altering it. But he can’t admit to doing this. He claims to be only making it intelligible, by disclosing its true meaning.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Susan Sontag", "slug": "susan-sontag", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-sontag" }, "book": { "title": "Against Interpretation and Other Essays", "slug": "against-interpretation-and-other-essays", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-sontag/against-interpretation-and-other-essays" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 6, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "criticism", "slug": "criticism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/criticism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag#Against_Interpretation_and_Other_Essays_(1966)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:54" }, { "id": "69d57a93-102b-4c92-8c14-2660127f7c3d", "slug": "the-work-of-kafka", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-sontag/against-interpretation-and-other-essays/the-work-of-kafka", "text": "The work of Kafka … has been subjected to a mass ravishment by no less than three armies of interpreters. Those who read Kafka as a social allegory see case studies of the frustrations and insanity of modern bureaucracy and its ultimate issuance in the totalitarian state. Those who read Kafka as a psychoanalytic allegory see desperate revelations of Kafka’s fear of his father, his castration anxieties, his sense of his own impotence, his thralldom to his dreams. Those who read Kafka as a religious allegory explain that K. in The Castle is trying to gain access to heaven, that Joseph K. in The Trial is being judged by the inexorable and mysterious justice of God.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Susan Sontag", "slug": "susan-sontag", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-sontag" }, "book": { "title": "Against Interpretation and Other Essays", "slug": "against-interpretation-and-other-essays", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-sontag/against-interpretation-and-other-essays" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "criticism", "slug": "criticism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/criticism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag#Against_Interpretation_and_Other_Essays_(1966)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:54" }, { "id": "1ac73af2-2313-4060-834a-84d81c4a2cc8", "slug": "the-old-style", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-sontag/against-interpretation-and-other-essays/the-old-style", "text": "The old style of interpretation was insistent, but respectful; it erected another meaning on top of the literal one. The modern style of interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs ‘behind’ the text, to find a sub-text which is the true one. The most celebrated and influential modern doctrines, those of Marx and Freud, actually amount to elaborate systems of hermeneutics, aggressive and impious theories of interpretation.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Susan Sontag", "slug": "susan-sontag", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-sontag" }, "book": { "title": "Against Interpretation and Other Essays", "slug": "against-interpretation-and-other-essays", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-sontag/against-interpretation-and-other-essays" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 6, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "criticism", "slug": "criticism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/criticism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag#Against_Interpretation_and_Other_Essays_(1966)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:54" }, { "id": "5870c0c7-855f-49f8-b257-1f253910a0f9", "slug": "paradise-lost-excited", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mary-shelley/frankenstein/paradise-lost-excited", "text": "Paradise Lost excited different and far deeper emotions. I read it, as I had read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a true history. It moved every feeling of wonder and awe that the picture of an omnipotent God warring with his creatures was capable of exciting. I often referred the several situations, as their similarity struck me, to my own. Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in every other respect. He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature, happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his Creator; he was allowed to converse with and acquire knowledge from beings of a superior nature, but I was wretched, helpless, and alone.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Mary Shelley", "slug": "mary-shelley", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mary-shelley" }, "book": { "title": "Frankenstein", "slug": "frankenstein", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mary-shelley/frankenstein" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "loneliness", "slug": "loneliness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/loneliness" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Frankenstein_(novel)#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:46" }, { "id": "06631a8b-26ab-4766-a8a0-10873c975f3b", "slug": "literary-critics-like", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-goodman/growing-up-absurd/literary-critics-like", "text": "Literary critics like Lionel Trilling … demand that our novels illuminate the manners and morals of prevailing society. Professor Trilling is right, because otherwise what use are they for us? But he is wrong-headed, because he does not see that the burden of proof is not on the artist but on our society. If such convenient criticism of prevalent life does not get to be written, it is likely that the prevailing society is not inspiring enough; its humanity is not great enough, it does not have enough future, to be worth the novelist’s trouble.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Paul Goodman", "slug": "paul-goodman", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-goodman" }, "book": { "title": "Growing Up Absurd", "slug": "growing-up-absurd", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-goodman/growing-up-absurd" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 214, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "society", "slug": "society", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Goodman#Growing_Up_Absurd_(1956)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:40" }, { "id": "bd377207-8d50-4591-a993-b5755c3c074b", "slug": "the-art-of-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/murasaki-shikibu/the-tale-of-genji/the-art-of-the", "text": "[The art of the novel] does not simply consist in the author's telling a story about the adventures of some other person. On the contrary, it happens because the storyteller's own experience of men and things, whether for good or ill—not only what he has passed through himself, but even events which he has only witnessed or been told of—has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Murasaki Shikibu", "slug": "murasaki-shikibu", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/murasaki-shikibu" }, "book": { "title": "The Tale of Genji", "slug": "the-tale-of-genji", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/murasaki-shikibu/the-tale-of-genji" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "emotions", "slug": "emotions", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/emotions" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Murasaki_Shikibu#The_Tale_of_Genji,_trans._Arthur_Waley", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:39" }, { "id": "a89a6800-d5aa-472b-89a2-4105279ec461", "slug": "anything-whatsoever-may", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/murasaki-shikibu/the-tale-of-genji/anything-whatsoever-may", "text": "Anything whatsoever may become the subject of a novel, provided only that it happens in this mundane life and not in some fairyland beyond our human ken.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Murasaki Shikibu", "slug": "murasaki-shikibu", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/murasaki-shikibu" }, "book": { "title": "The Tale of Genji", "slug": "the-tale-of-genji", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/murasaki-shikibu/the-tale-of-genji" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Murasaki_Shikibu#The_Tale_of_Genji,_trans._Arthur_Waley", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:39" }, { "id": "c0c7cbe6-ac30-4be8-a0c0-39dfdc65d8ae", "slug": "all-plots-tend", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/don-delillo/white-noise/all-plots-tend", "text": "All plots tend to move deathwards. This is the nature of plots.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Don DeLillo", "slug": "don-delillo", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/don-delillo" }, "book": { "title": "White Noise", "slug": "white-noise", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/don-delillo/white-noise" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "death", "slug": "death", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/death" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Don_DeLillo#White_Noise_(1984)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:38" }, { "id": "c1930bd9-47df-402b-a09a-fb261d3aa6f9", "slug": "o-june-19-1994", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-z-danielewski/house-of-leaves/o-june-19-1994", "text": "[O]\n\nJune 19, 1994\n\nPrometheus, thief of light, giver of light, bound by the gods, must have been a book.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Mark Z. Danielewski", "slug": "mark-z-danielewski", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-z-danielewski" }, "book": { "title": "House of Leaves", "slug": "house-of-leaves", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-z-danielewski/house-of-leaves" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 546, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves#Exhibits_and_Appendices", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:36" }, { "id": "16c0af99-733b-4cfe-9e10-dba0d5693361", "slug": "remarks-are-not", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gertrude-stein/the-autobiography-of-alice-b-toklas/remarks-are-not", "text": "Remarks are not literature.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Gertrude Stein", "slug": "gertrude-stein", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gertrude-stein" }, "book": { "title": "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas", "slug": "the-autobiography-of-alice-b-toklas", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gertrude-stein/the-autobiography-of-alice-b-toklas" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein#The_Autobiography_of_Alice_B._Toklas_(1933)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:34" }, { "id": "f53be75a-cfe9-4d64-9253-914cbb1198f9", "slug": "if-you-will", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-bach/illusions/if-you-will", "text": "If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Richard Bach", "slug": "richard-bach", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-bach" }, "book": { "title": "Illusions", "slug": "illusions", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-bach/illusions" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Bach#Illusions_:_The_Adventures_of_a_Reluctant_Messiah_(1977)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:18" }, { "id": "49c26572-cf4b-4365-9442-fc6d58e9f5b1", "slug": "the-press-is-a-group", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/marshall-mcluhan/understanding-media/the-press-is-a-group", "text": "The press is a group confessional form that provides communal participation. The book is a private confessional form that provides a “point of view.” (p. 204)", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Marshall McLuhan", "slug": "marshall-mcluhan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/marshall-mcluhan" }, "book": { "title": "Understanding Media", "slug": "understanding-media", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/marshall-mcluhan/understanding-media" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "media", "slug": "media", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/media" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan#Understanding_Media_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:12" }, { "id": "eaee6557-bc69-4abd-9841-717b2067bfa7", "slug": "a-book-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/joseph-joubert/the-notebooks-of-joseph-joubert/a-book-that", "text": "A book that reveals the mind is worth more than one that only reveals its subject.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Joseph Joubert", "slug": "joseph-joubert", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/joseph-joubert" }, "book": { "title": "The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert", "slug": "the-notebooks-of-joseph-joubert", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/joseph-joubert/the-notebooks-of-joseph-joubert" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Joubert#The_Notebooks_of_Joseph_Joubert_(1883)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:09" }, { "id": "99fa7fa6-3caf-43c1-b1dd-d72283cccefb", "slug": "i-believe-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/journal-of-a-novel/i-believe-that", "text": "I believe that the great ones, Plato, Lao Tze, Buddha, Christ, Paul and the great Hebrew prophets are not remembered for negation or denial. Not that it is necessary to be remembered but there is one purpose in writing that I can see, beyond simply doing it interestingly. It is the duty of the writer to lift up, to extend, to encourage. If the written word has contributed anything at all to our developing species and our half developed culture, it is this: Great writing has been a staff to lean on, a mother to consult, a wisdom to pick up stumbling folly, a strength in weakness and a courage to support sick cowardice. And how any negative or despairing approach can pretend to be literature I do not know. It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would milleniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth, and a few remnants of fossilized jaw bones, a few teeth in strata of limestone would be the only mark our species would have left on the earth.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Steinbeck", "slug": "john-steinbeck", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck" }, "book": { "title": "Journal of a Novel", "slug": "journal-of-a-novel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/journal-of-a-novel" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "writers", "slug": "writers", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writers" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Journal_of_a_Novel_(1969)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:04" }, { "id": "02b31843-e2b7-4186-be0e-799925c7b344", "slug": "a-book-is-like", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/journal-of-a-novel/a-book-is-like", "text": "A book is like a man — clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Steinbeck", "slug": "john-steinbeck", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck" }, "book": { "title": "Journal of a Novel", "slug": "journal-of-a-novel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/journal-of-a-novel" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Journal_of_a_Novel_(1969)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:04" }, { "id": "3c4cdd67-2676-4b70-8f5f-920bffa2a1fa", "slug": "the-storytellers-at-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/east-of-eden/the-storytellers-at-the", "text": "The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Steinbeck", "slug": "john-steinbeck", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck" }, "book": { "title": "East of Eden", "slug": "east-of-eden", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/east-of-eden" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 356, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/East_of_Eden_(novel)#Part_3", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:00" }, { "id": "cef94bb9-db72-4eb5-80b2-799689f719a4", "slug": "the-story-was", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/tortilla-flat/the-story-was", "text": "The story was gradually taking shape. Pilon liked it this way. It ruined a story to have it all come out quickly. The good story lay in half-told things which must be filled in out of the hearer’s own experience.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Steinbeck", "slug": "john-steinbeck", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck" }, "book": { "title": "Tortilla Flat", "slug": "tortilla-flat", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/tortilla-flat" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Tortilla_Flat_(1935)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:56" }, { "id": "e5c2aaef-0afd-49dc-9381-0b29e64c8555", "slug": "a-comic-writer", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-fielding/joseph-andrews/a-comic-writer", "text": "A comic writer should of all others be the least excused for deviating from nature, since it may not be always so easy for a serious poet to meet with the great and the admirable; but life every where furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Henry Fielding", "slug": "henry-fielding", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-fielding" }, "book": { "title": "Joseph Andrews", "slug": "joseph-andrews", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-fielding/joseph-andrews" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Fielding#Joseph_Andrews_(1742)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:43" }, { "id": "d28230fa-d734-4131-b7d8-c01d6b4c840b", "slug": "i-describe-not", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-fielding/joseph-andrews/i-describe-not", "text": "I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Henry Fielding", "slug": "henry-fielding", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-fielding" }, "book": { "title": "Joseph Andrews", "slug": "joseph-andrews", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-fielding/joseph-andrews" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Fielding#Joseph_Andrews_(1742)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:43" }, { "id": "a37c9b43-502f-4f96-a493-c168fe95952a", "slug": "i-have-come", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-silverberg/thorns/i-have-come", "text": "I have come to prefer something looser, a rough sort of definition which says simply that science fiction attempts to portray that which does not exist, a speculative reality, but endeavors to explore the consequences of such a speculation in a rigorous, systematic, and scientifically plausible way.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Robert Silverberg", "slug": "robert-silverberg", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-silverberg" }, "book": { "title": "Thorns", "slug": "thorns", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-silverberg/thorns" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Silverberg#Thorns_(1967)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:38" }, { "id": "8250fc3b-1559-474b-a13a-c328e2a2147c", "slug": "why-do-countries", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robertson-davies/the-salterton-trilogy/why-do-countries", "text": "Why do countries have to have literatures? Why does a country like Canada, so late upon the international scene, feel that it must rapidly acquire the trappings of older countries – music of its own, pictures of its own, books of its own – and why does it fuss and stew, and storm the heavens with its outcries when it does not have them?", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Robertson Davies", "slug": "robertson-davies", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robertson-davies" }, "book": { "title": "The Salterton Trilogy", "slug": "the-salterton-trilogy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robertson-davies/the-salterton-trilogy" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "culture", "slug": "culture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/culture" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Salterton_Trilogy#Leaven_of_Malice", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:15" }, { "id": "99ca93ea-70fe-48c8-98f1-9f4d2a75c1f6", "slug": "but-what-ailed", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robertson-davies/the-cunning-man/but-what-ailed", "text": "But what ailed Little Eva St. Clair, in Uncle Tom's Cabin? What carried off Little Nell?...They have no clear symptoms, and seem to die of Ingrowing Virtue.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Robertson Davies", "slug": "robertson-davies", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robertson-davies" }, "book": { "title": "The Cunning Man", "slug": "the-cunning-man", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robertson-davies/the-cunning-man" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robertson_Davies#The_Cunning_Man_(1994)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:13" }, { "id": "982b5554-0a87-4228-8e0e-9ba2d03a4875", "slug": "there-are-no-classics", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/raymond-chandler/the-simple-art-of-murder/there-are-no-classics", "text": "There are no 'classics' of crime and detection. Not one. Within its frame of reference, which is the only way it should be judged, a classic is a piece of writing which exhausts the possibilities of its form and can never be surpassed. No story or novel of mystery has done that yet. Few have come close. Which is one of the principal reasons why otherwise reasonable people continue to assault the citadel.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Raymond Chandler", "slug": "raymond-chandler", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/raymond-chandler" }, "book": { "title": "The Simple Art of Murder", "slug": "the-simple-art-of-murder", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/raymond-chandler/the-simple-art-of-murder" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Raymond_Chandler#The_Simple_Art_of_Murder_(1950)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:43:16" }, { "id": "688d04a6-f46a-45cd-adc1-6d7c607c3176", "slug": "in-my-country", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/christopher-hitchens/and-yet/in-my-country", "text": "In my country of birth the great new fictional practitioners have in their front rank names like Rushdie, Ishiguro, Kureishi, Mo. This attainment on their part makes me oddly proud to be whatever I am, and convinces me that internationalism is the highest form of patriotism.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Christopher Hitchens", "slug": "christopher-hitchens", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/christopher-hitchens" }, "book": { "title": "And Yet", "slug": "and-yet", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/christopher-hitchens/and-yet" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "patriotism", "slug": "patriotism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/patriotism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens#And_Yet...:_Essays_(2015)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:43:06" }, { "id": "f9fa2930-7f1b-4573-855c-1750e09fdd41", "slug": "the-modern-english", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/the-road-to-wigan-pier/the-modern-english", "text": "The modern English literary world, at any rate the high-brow section of it, is a sort of poisonous jungle where only weeds can flourish.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "George Orwell", "slug": "george-orwell", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell" }, "book": { "title": "The Road to Wigan Pier", "slug": "the-road-to-wigan-pier", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/the-road-to-wigan-pier" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "criticism", "slug": "criticism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/criticism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:51" }, { "id": "da5c1aa0-7c6c-4d0d-8e5a-de7669c24570", "slug": "i-think-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/a-man-without-a-country/i-think-that", "text": "I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kurt Vonnegut", "slug": "kurt-vonnegut", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut" }, "book": { "title": "A Man Without a Country", "slug": "a-man-without-a-country", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/a-man-without-a-country" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#A_Man_Without_a_Country_(2005)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:45" }, { "id": "5aa1d687-94a9-4c4f-a1bb-a33bc5570a85", "slug": "what-is-literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/bluebeard/what-is-literature", "text": "What is literature but an insider's newsletter about affairs relating to molecules, of no importance to anything in the Universe but a few molecules who have the disease called \"thought\".", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kurt Vonnegut", "slug": "kurt-vonnegut", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut" }, "book": { "title": "Bluebeard", "slug": "bluebeard", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/bluebeard" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 188, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "thinking", "slug": "thinking", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/thinking" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#Bluebeard_(1987)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:42" }, { "id": "98778d7c-c814-4941-86a8-54438b64ffee", "slug": "i-think-it-can", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/palm-sunday/i-think-it-can", "text": "I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kurt Vonnegut", "slug": "kurt-vonnegut", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut" }, "book": { "title": "Palm Sunday", "slug": "palm-sunday", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/palm-sunday" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#Palm_Sunday_(1981)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:41" }, { "id": "82f3a809-0e19-4e46-8d88-4c0f37fa728e", "slug": "as-for-literary", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/palm-sunday/as-for-literary", "text": "As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kurt Vonnegut", "slug": "kurt-vonnegut", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut" }, "book": { "title": "Palm Sunday", "slug": "palm-sunday", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/palm-sunday" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "criticism", "slug": "criticism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/criticism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#Palm_Sunday_(1981)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:41" }, { "id": "a304b452-7f3d-4950-8bff-f540f3b76a70", "slug": "hard-science-gives", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/nassim-nicholas-taleb/the-bed-of-procrustes/hard-science-gives", "text": "Hard science gives sensational results with a horribly boring process; philosophy gives boring results with a sensational process; literature gives sensational results with a sensational process; and economics gives boring results with a boring process.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Nassim Nicholas Taleb", "slug": "nassim-nicholas-taleb", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/nassim-nicholas-taleb" }, "book": { "title": "The Bed of Procrustes", "slug": "the-bed-of-procrustes", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/nassim-nicholas-taleb/the-bed-of-procrustes" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 45, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "science", "slug": "science", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "philosophy", "slug": "philosophy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/philosophy" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb#The_Bed_of_Procrustes:_Philosophical_and_Practical_Aphorisms_(2010)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:32" }, { "id": "ae062922-5236-4209-b8b5-f05d209fc037", "slug": "the-purifying-healing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-mann/the-magic-mountain/the-purifying-healing", "text": "'''The purifying, healing influence of literature, the dissipating of passions by knowledge and the written word, literature as the path to understanding, forgiveness and love, the redeeming might of the word, the literary spirit as the noblest manifestation of the spirit of man, the writer as perfected type, as saint.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Thomas Mann", "slug": "thomas-mann", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-mann" }, "book": { "title": "The Magic Mountain", "slug": "the-magic-mountain", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-mann/the-magic-mountain" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "words", "slug": "words", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/words" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Mann#The_Magic_Mountain_(1924)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:17" }, { "id": "60ef4e44-a1be-4665-9f01-3db1529dc24c", "slug": "i-always-play", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/orson-scott-card/heartfire/i-always-play", "text": "“I always play with everybody,” said Honoré. “It is my vocation. God put me on the earth to do with people what cats do to mice. Play with them, chew the last bit of life out of them, them pick them up in my mouth and drop them on people’s doorsteps. That is the business of literature.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Orson Scott Card", "slug": "orson-scott-card", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/orson-scott-card" }, "book": { "title": "Heartfire", "slug": "heartfire", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/orson-scott-card/heartfire" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Orson_Scott_Card#Heartfire_(1998)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:14" }, { "id": "aaf5a432-6844-4a0e-9765-485cb51fe7c6", "slug": "whatever-is-felt", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/not-under-forty/whatever-is-felt", "text": "Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there — that, one might say, is created. It is the inexplicable presence of the thing not named, of the overtone divined by the ear but not heard by it, the verbal mood, the emotional aura of the fact or the thing or the deed, that gives high quality to the novel or the drama, as well as to poetry itself.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Willa Cather", "slug": "willa-cather", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather" }, "book": { "title": "Not Under Forty", "slug": "not-under-forty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/not-under-forty" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Willa_Cather#Not_Under_Forty_(1936)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:04" }, { "id": "254367b1-81c2-4196-99b5-7c03696a4b1d", "slug": "there-is-a-popular", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/not-under-forty/there-is-a-popular", "text": "There is a popular superstition that \"realism\" asserts itself in the cataloguing of a great number of material objects, in explaining mechanical processes, the methods of operating manufactories and trades, and in minutely and unsparingly describing physical sensations. But is not realism, more than it is anything else, an attitude of mind on the part of the writer toward his material, a vague indication of the sympathy and candour with which he accepts, rather than chooses, his theme?", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Willa Cather", "slug": "willa-cather", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather" }, "book": { "title": "Not Under Forty", "slug": "not-under-forty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/not-under-forty" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Willa_Cather#Not_Under_Forty_(1936)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:04" }, { "id": "122396bc-c26b-4ddb-b60c-f02f34adb799", "slug": "one-might-say", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/not-under-forty/one-might-say", "text": "One might say that every fine story must leave in the mind of the sensitive reader an intangible residuum of pleasure; a cadence, a quality of voice that is exclusively the writer's own, individual, unique. A quality which one can remember without the volume at hand, can experience over and over again in the mind but can never absolutely define, as one can experience in memory a melody, or the summer perfume of a garden... It is a common fallacy that a writer, if he is talented enough, can achieve this poignant quality by improving upon his subject-matter, by using his \"imagination\" upon it and twisting it to suit his purpose. The truth is that by such a process (which is not imaginative at all!) he can at best produce only a brilliant sham, which, like a badly built and pretentious house, looks poor and shabby after a few years. If he achieves anything noble, anything enduring, it must be by giving himself absolutely to his material. And this gift of sympathy is his great gift; is the fine thing in him that alone can make his work fine.\n\nThe artist spends a lifetime in pursuing the things that haunt him, in having his mind \"teased\" by them, in trying to get these conceptions down on paper exactly as they are to him and not in conventional poses supposed to reveal their character; trying this method and that, as a painter tries different lightings and different attitudes with his subject to catch the one that presents it more suggestively than any other. And at the end of a lifetime he emerges with much that is more or less happy experimenting, and comparatively little that is the very flower of himself and his genius.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Willa Cather", "slug": "willa-cather", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather" }, "book": { "title": "Not Under Forty", "slug": "not-under-forty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/not-under-forty" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Willa_Cather#Not_Under_Forty_(1936)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:04" }, { "id": "9d66dd0d-e26a-4c87-a9cd-8ec9ee2b92ec", "slug": "the-purblind-majority", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-branch-cabell/the-cream-of-the-jest/the-purblind-majority", "text": "The purblind majority quite honestly believed that literature was meant to mimic human life, and that it did so. And in consequence, their love-affairs, their maxims, their so-called natural ties and instincts, and above all, their wickedness, became just so many bungling plagiarisms from something they had read, in a novel or a Bible or a poem or a newspaper. People progressed from the kindergarten to the cemetery assuming that their emotion at every crisis was what books taught them was the appropriate emotion, and without noticing that it was in reality something quite different. Human life was a distorting tarnished mirror held up to literature: this much at least of Wilde's old paradox — that life mimicked art — was indisputable. Human life, very clumsily, tried to reproduce the printed word.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "James Branch Cabell", "slug": "james-branch-cabell", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-branch-cabell" }, "book": { "title": "The Cream of the Jest", "slug": "the-cream-of-the-jest", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-branch-cabell/the-cream-of-the-jest" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Branch_Cabell#The_Cream_of_the_Jest_(1917)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:49" }, { "id": "27c3d49e-4869-4d64-afe8-5d0dc8fb07a5", "slug": "life-is-infinitely", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-conan-doyle/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes/life-is-infinitely", "text": "Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Arthur Conan Doyle", "slug": "arthur-conan-doyle", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-conan-doyle" }, "book": { "title": "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", "slug": "the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-conan-doyle/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 190, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes#A_Case_of_Identity", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:40" }, { "id": "c7d814ce-9dd8-463a-b668-b24c57586e92", "slug": "i-suspect-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gore-vidal/at-home/i-suspect-that", "text": "I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Gore Vidal", "slug": "gore-vidal", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gore-vidal" }, "book": { "title": "At Home", "slug": "at-home", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gore-vidal/at-home" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "sex", "slug": "sex", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/sex" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gore_Vidal#At_Home_(1988)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:19" }, { "id": "2457e0c8-56a7-47ee-94c3-1fd592ba7cf1", "slug": "we-do-not", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gore-vidal/united-states/we-do-not", "text": "We do not, of course, write literary criticism at all now. Academe has won the battle in which Wilson fought so fiercely on the other side. Ambitious English teachers now invent systems that have nothing to do with literature or life but everything to do with those games that must be played in order for them to rise in the academic bureaucracy. Their works are empty indeed. But then, their works are not meant to be full. They are to be taught, not read. The long dialogue has broken down. Fortunately, as Flaubert pointed out, the worst thing about the present is the future. One day there will be no... But I have been asked not to give the game away. Meanwhile, I shall drop a single hint: Only construct!", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Gore Vidal", "slug": "gore-vidal", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gore-vidal" }, "book": { "title": "United States", "slug": "united-states", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gore-vidal/united-states" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "criticism", "slug": "criticism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/criticism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gore_Vidal#United_States_-_Essays_1952%E2%80%931992_(1992)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:19" }, { "id": "e20636a4-95a4-440d-b66c-aba9b7a6f8e1", "slug": "green-in-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf/orlando/green-in-nature", "text": "Green in nature is one thing, green in in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Virginia Woolf", "slug": "virginia-woolf", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf" }, "book": { "title": "Orlando", "slug": "orlando", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf/orlando" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Orlando:_A_Biography#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:17" }, { "id": "d496ed8a-7892-4eeb-86cf-d9fc15fd6f78", "slug": "only-those-who", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf/orlando/only-those-who", "text": "Only those who have little need of the truth, and no respect for it — the poets and novelists — can be trusted to do it, for this is one of the cases where the truth does no exist. Nothing exists. The whole thing is a miasma — a mirage.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Virginia Woolf", "slug": "virginia-woolf", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf" }, "book": { "title": "Orlando", "slug": "orlando", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf/orlando" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "truth", "slug": "truth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/truth" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf#Orlando:_A_Biography_(1928)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:17" }, { "id": "bae82d5f-1b1b-4c95-b0ca-7a5a75afc71d", "slug": "literature-is-strewn", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf/a-room-of-ones-own/literature-is-strewn", "text": "Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Virginia Woolf", "slug": "virginia-woolf", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf" }, "book": { "title": "A Room of One's Own", "slug": "a-room-of-ones-own", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf/a-room-of-ones-own" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 58, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "public opinion", "slug": "public-opinion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/public-opinion" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf#A_Room_of_One's_Own_(1929)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:16" }, { "id": "6a92d12d-5413-481e-9c04-7305db03aa00", "slug": "fiction-is-like", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf/a-room-of-ones-own/fiction-is-like", "text": "Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Virginia Woolf", "slug": "virginia-woolf", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf" }, "book": { "title": "A Room of One's Own", "slug": "a-room-of-ones-own", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf/a-room-of-ones-own" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 43, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf#A_Room_of_One's_Own_(1929)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:16" }, { "id": "4374837a-a357-4a87-a05f-ce3d793562e1", "slug": "examine-for-a-moment", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf/the-common-reader-volume-1/examine-for-a-moment", "text": "Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Virginia Woolf", "slug": "virginia-woolf", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf" }, "book": { "title": "The Common Reader: Volume 1", "slug": "the-common-reader-volume-1", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf/the-common-reader-volume-1" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf#The_Common_Reader_(1925)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:14" }, { "id": "ffeff2c5-a58d-4061-983e-e861dbcc8ef7", "slug": "to-read-a-novel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/quentin-crisp/the-naked-civil-servant/to-read-a-novel", "text": "To read a novel or see a play was to drink life through a straw — to smoke it through a filter-tip. If we were not afraid of blackening our teeth or riddling our lungs with cancer — if we were a dauntless race of men with strong digestions — we would be able to devour life without the aid of these over-civilized devices.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Quentin Crisp", "slug": "quentin-crisp", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/quentin-crisp" }, "book": { "title": "The Naked Civil Servant", "slug": "the-naked-civil-servant", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/quentin-crisp/the-naked-civil-servant" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Quentin_Crisp#The_Naked_Civil_Servant_(1968)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:11" }, { "id": "6d5fb896-195c-4d13-9ef2-573cf01f0bcd", "slug": "this-newfound-state", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson/distrust-that-particular-flavor/this-newfound-state", "text": "This newfound state of No Future is, in my opinion, a very good thing. It indicates a kind of maturity, an understanding that every future is someone else's past, every present someone else's future. Upon arriving in the capital-F Future, we discover it, invariably, to be the lower-case now.\n\nThe best science fiction has always known that, but it was a sort of cultural secret. When I began to write fiction, at the very end of the Seventies, I was fortunate to have been taught, as an undergraduate, that imaginary futures are always, regardless of what the authors might think, about the day in which they're written. Orwell knew it, writing Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1948, and I knew it writing Neuromancer, my first novel, which was published in 1984.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "William Gibson", "slug": "william-gibson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson" }, "book": { "title": "Distrust that Particular Flavor", "slug": "distrust-that-particular-flavor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson/distrust-that-particular-flavor" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "the future", "slug": "the-future", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-future" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Distrust_That_Particular_Flavor_(2012)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:10" }, { "id": "980ae84e-4c6d-4ac6-a18b-5c62425012f8", "slug": "fiction-appeals-to-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-k-dick/the-man-in-the-high-castle/fiction-appeals-to-the", "text": "[Fiction] Appeals to the base lusts that hide in everyone no matter how respectable on the surface.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Philip K. Dick", "slug": "philip-k-dick", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-k-dick" }, "book": { "title": "The Man in the High Castle", "slug": "the-man-in-the-high-castle", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-k-dick/the-man-in-the-high-castle" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick#The_Man_in_the_High_Castle_(1962)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:04" }, { "id": "2f0a6318-6654-4597-b49e-1250da43d70b", "slug": "by-and-large", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alexis-de-tocqueville/democracy-in-america/by-and-large", "text": "By and large the literature of a democracy will never exhibit the order, regularity, skill, and art characteristic of aristocratic literature; formal qualities will be neglected or actually despised. The style will often be strange, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, and almost always strong and bold. Writers will be more anxious to work quickly than to perfect details. Short works will be commoner than long books, wit than erudition, imagination than depth. There will be a rude and untutored vigor of thought with great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will strive to astonish more than to please, and to stir passions rather than to charm taste.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Alexis de Tocqueville", "slug": "alexis-de-tocqueville", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alexis-de-tocqueville" }, "book": { "title": "Democracy in America", "slug": "democracy-in-america", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alexis-de-tocqueville/democracy-in-america" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "democracy", "slug": "democracy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/democracy" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville#Democracy_in_America,_Volume_II_(1840)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:38" }, { "id": "fc0c4443-d6bb-40c8-96d0-40ea93e6ff28", "slug": "uncle-toms-cabin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-m-pirsig/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/uncle-toms-cabin", "text": "Uncle Tom's Cabin was no literary masterpiece but it was a culture-bearing book. It came at a time when the entire culture was about to reject slavery. People seized upon it as a portrayal of their own new values and it became an overwhelming success.\n\nThe success of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance seems the result of this culture-bearing phenomenon. The involuntary shock treatment described here is against the law today. It is a violation of human liberty. The culture has changed.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Robert M. Pirsig", "slug": "robert-m-pirsig", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-m-pirsig" }, "book": { "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", "slug": "zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-m-pirsig/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "culture", "slug": "culture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/culture" }, { "name": "slavery", "slug": "slavery", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/slavery" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig#Afterword_(1984)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:34" }, { "id": "7a3f7536-48d1-4b6b-b300-ea566b259784", "slug": "a-culture-bearing-book", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-m-pirsig/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/a-culture-bearing-book", "text": "A culture-bearing book, like a mule, bears the culture on its back. No one should sit down to write one deliberately. Culture-bearing books occur almost accidentally, like a sudden change in the stock market. There are books of high quality that are an part of the culture, but that is not the same. They are a part of it. They aren't carrying it anywhere. They may talk about insanity sympathetically, for example, because that's the standard cultural attitude. But they don't carry any suggestion that insanity might be something other than sickness or degeneracy.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Robert M. Pirsig", "slug": "robert-m-pirsig", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-m-pirsig" }, "book": { "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", "slug": "zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-m-pirsig/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "culture", "slug": "culture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/culture" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig#Afterword_(1984)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:34" }, { "id": "ae8b764d-56be-4c04-a1c8-32dbcfaf235a", "slug": "in-the-face", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/brocas-brain/in-the-face", "text": "In the face of all this, many of the standard ideas of science fiction seem to me to pale by comparison. I see the relative absence of these things and the distortions of scientific thinking often encountered in science fiction as terrible wasted opportunities. Real science is as amenable to exciting and engrossing fiction as fake science, and I think it is important to exploit every opportunity to convey scientific ideas in a civilization which is both based upon science and does almost nothing to ensure that science is understood.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Carl Sagan", "slug": "carl-sagan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan" }, "book": { "title": "Broca's Brain", "slug": "brocas-brain", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/brocas-brain" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 166, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "science", "slug": "science", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#Broca's_Brain_(1979)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:26" }, { "id": "e33dbbb8-f454-4687-b4ba-1d8f843b08a6", "slug": "we-build-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/trigger-warning-short-fictions-and-disturbances/we-build-the", "text": "We build the stories in our heads. We take words, and we give them power, and we look out through other eyes, and we see, and experience, what others see. I wonder, Are fictions safe places? And then I ask myself, Should they be safe places?", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Neil Gaiman", "slug": "neil-gaiman", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman" }, "book": { "title": "Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances", "slug": "trigger-warning-short-fictions-and-disturbances", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/trigger-warning-short-fictions-and-disturbances" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "empathy", "slug": "empathy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/empathy" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neil_Gaiman#Trigger_Warning_(2015)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:14" }, { "id": "20be79e5-b082-4aea-9910-95af021c743f", "slug": "i-grew-up-loving", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/trigger-warning-short-fictions-and-disturbances/i-grew-up-loving", "text": "I grew up loving and respecting short stories. They seemed to me to be the purest and most perfect things people could make: not a word wasted, in the best of them.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Neil Gaiman", "slug": "neil-gaiman", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman" }, "book": { "title": "Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances", "slug": "trigger-warning-short-fictions-and-disturbances", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/trigger-warning-short-fictions-and-disturbances" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neil_Gaiman#Trigger_Warning_(2015)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:14" }, { "id": "5c026747-98e4-48ab-b121-81e19f678d16", "slug": "without-individuals-we-see", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/american-gods/without-individuals-we-see", "text": "Without individuals we see only numbers: a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, \"casualties may rise to a million.\" With individual stories, the statistics become people — but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child’s swollen, swollen belly, and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, his skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are we not doing a disservice to his sister, who lies in the searing dust beside him, a distorted, distended caricature of a human child? And there, if we feel for them, are they now more important to us than a thousand other children touched by the same famine, a thousand other young lives who will soon be food for the flies’ own myriad squirming children?\n\nWe draw our lines around these moments of pain, and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearllike, from our souls without real pain.\n\nFiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.\n\nA life that is, like any other, unlike any other.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Neil Gaiman", "slug": "neil-gaiman", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman" }, "book": { "title": "American Gods", "slug": "american-gods", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/american-gods" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "suffering", "slug": "suffering", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "empathy", "slug": "empathy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/empathy" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/American_Gods#Chapter_11", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:10" }, { "id": "73b8d803-de4c-43c6-bebb-1f43aed89d91", "slug": "i-owe-an-enormous", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/stardust/i-owe-an-enormous", "text": "I owe an enormous debt to Hope Mirrlees, Lord Dunsany, James Branch Cabell and C. S. Lewis, wherever they may currently be, for showing me that fairy stories were for adults too.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Neil Gaiman", "slug": "neil-gaiman", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman" }, "book": { "title": "Stardust", "slug": "stardust", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/stardust" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stardust_(Gaiman_novel)#Acknowledgments", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:08" }, { "id": "82474e5d-207a-4837-b0fc-20b95a4656df", "slug": "internally-in-itself", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kingsley-amis/stanley-and-the-women/internally-in-itself", "text": "Internally, in itself, madness is an artistic desert. Nothing of any general interest can be said about it. Like sex. But the effects it has on the world outside it can be very interesting indeed. It has no other valid literary use.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kingsley Amis", "slug": "kingsley-amis", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kingsley-amis" }, "book": { "title": "Stanley And The Women", "slug": "stanley-and-the-women", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kingsley-amis/stanley-and-the-women" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 148, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "madness", "slug": "madness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/madness" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kingsley_Amis#Stanley_and_the_Women_(1984)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:04" }, { "id": "b66001ec-709b-4624-be3a-1f3b1b3185ea", "slug": "there-is-nothing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/the-trouble-with-being-born/there-is-nothing", "text": "There is nothing to say about anything. So there can be no limit to the number of books.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Emil Cioran", "slug": "emil-cioran", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran" }, "book": { "title": "The Trouble With Being Born", "slug": "the-trouble-with-being-born", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/the-trouble-with-being-born" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "irony", "slug": "irony", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/irony" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran#The_Trouble_With_Being_Born_(1973)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:42" }, { "id": "d8f3758b-1a1a-4a55-aa27-beb46f1016ba", "slug": "there-is-moreover", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/emile-or-on-education/there-is-moreover", "text": "There is, moreover, a certain simplicity of taste which goes straight to the heart; and this is only to be found in the classics. In oratory, poetry, and every kind of literature, Emile will find the classical authors as he found them in history, full of matter and sober in their judgment. The authors of our own time, on the contrary, say little and talk much. To take their judgment as our constant law is not the way to form our own judgment. These differences of taste make themselves felt in all that is left of classical times and even on their tombs. Our monuments are covered with praises, theirs recorded facts.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jean Jacques Rousseau", "slug": "jean-jacques-rousseau", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau" }, "book": { "title": "Emile; or On Education", "slug": "emile-or-on-education", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/emile-or-on-education" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "simplicity", "slug": "simplicity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/simplicity" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emile,_or_On_Education#Book_IV", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:36" }, { "id": "81141a40-544e-406d-b656-e4b801f2a156", "slug": "speaking-generally-emile", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/emile-or-on-education/speaking-generally-emile", "text": "Speaking generally Emile will have more taste for the books of the ancients than for our own, just because they were the first, and therefore the ancients are nearer to nature and their genius is more distinct.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jean Jacques Rousseau", "slug": "jean-jacques-rousseau", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau" }, "book": { "title": "Emile; or On Education", "slug": "emile-or-on-education", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/emile-or-on-education" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emile,_or_On_Education#Book_IV", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:36" }, { "id": "35a89255-b67d-4682-bcab-eee97c359e99", "slug": "i-leave-modern", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/emile-or-on-education/i-leave-modern", "text": "I leave modern history on one side, not only because it has no character and all our people are alike, but because our historians, wholly taken up with effect, think of nothing but highly coloured portraits, which often represent nothing. [Footnote: Take, for instance, Guicciardini, Streda, Solis, Machiavelli, and sometimes even De Thou himself. Vertot is almost the only one who knows how to describe without giving fancy portraits.] The old historians generally give fewer portraits and bring more intelligence and common-sense to their judgments; but even among them there is plenty of scope for choice, and you must not begin with the wisest but with the simplest. I would not put Polybius or Sallust into the hands of a youth; Tacitus is the author of the old, young men cannot understand him; you must learn to see in human actions the simplest features of the heart of man before you try to sound its depths. You must be able to read facts clearly before you begin to study maxims. Philosophy in the form of maxims is only fit for the experienced. Youth should never deal with the general, all its teaching should deal with individual instances. To my mind Thucydides is the true model of historians. He relates facts without giving his opinion; but he omits no circumstance adapted to make us judge for ourselves. He puts everything that he relates before his reader; far from interposing between the facts and the readers, he conceals himself; we seem not to read but to see. Unfortunately he speaks of nothing but war, and in his stories we only see the least instructive part of the world, that is to say the battles. The virtues and defects of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand and the Commentaries of Caesar are almost the same. The kindly Herodotus, without portraits, without maxims, yet flowing, simple, full of details calculated to delight and interest in the highest degree, would be perhaps the best historian if these very details did not often degenerate into childish folly, better adapted to spoil the taste of youth than to form it; we need discretion before we can read him. I say nothing of Livy, his turn will come; but he is a statesman, a rhetorician, he is everything which is unsuitable for a youth.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jean Jacques Rousseau", "slug": "jean-jacques-rousseau", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau" }, "book": { "title": "Emile; or On Education", "slug": "emile-or-on-education", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/emile-or-on-education" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "history", "slug": "history", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emile,_or_On_Education#Book_IV", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:34" }, { "id": "b313fbfb-fa4f-4129-aef0-904ca9a87211", "slug": "things-were-easier", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-somerset-maugham/a-writers-notebook/things-were-easier", "text": "Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "William Somerset Maugham", "slug": "william-somerset-maugham", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-somerset-maugham" }, "book": { "title": "A Writer's Notebook", "slug": "a-writers-notebook", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-somerset-maugham/a-writers-notebook" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 196, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evil", "slug": "evil", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evil" }, { "name": "kindness", "slug": "kindness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/kindness" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/W._Somerset_Maugham#A_Writer's_Notebook_(1946)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:29" }, { "id": "25beff11-7aac-4ecb-ae72-cc94967e2886", "slug": "that-history-should", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jorge-luis-borges/ficciones/that-history-should", "text": "That history should have imitated history was already sufficiently marvellous; that history should imitate literature is inconceivable....", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jorge Luis Borges", "slug": "jorge-luis-borges", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jorge-luis-borges" }, "book": { "title": "Ficciones", "slug": "ficciones", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jorge-luis-borges/ficciones" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "history", "slug": "history", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jorge_Luis_Borges#Ficciones_(1944)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:20" }, { "id": "b8e5c54b-33cc-400e-bcb2-13acfc267563", "slug": "writing-long-books", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jorge-luis-borges/the-garden-of-forking-paths/writing-long-books", "text": "Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jorge Luis Borges", "slug": "jorge-luis-borges", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jorge-luis-borges" }, "book": { "title": "The Garden of Forking Paths", "slug": "the-garden-of-forking-paths", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jorge-luis-borges/the-garden-of-forking-paths" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jorge_Luis_Borges#The_Garden_of_Forking_Paths_(1942)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:19" }, { "id": "52c07fa5-4845-4cb3-a6aa-0872cc06a5d9", "slug": "it-was-a-bright", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/nineteen-eighty-four/it-was-a-bright", "text": "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "George Orwell", "slug": "george-orwell", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell" }, "book": { "title": "Nineteen Eighty-Four", "slug": "nineteen-eighty-four", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/nineteen-eighty-four" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "totalitarianism", "slug": "totalitarianism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/totalitarianism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Chapter_1", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:12" }, { "id": "c2bcf6b7-837d-444e-a666-fe7bc1dc5795", "slug": "then-i-started", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/a-moveable-feast/then-i-started", "text": "Then I started to think in Lipp's about when I had first been able to write a story about losing everything. It was up in Cortina d'Ampezzo when I had come back to join Hadley there after the spring skiing which I had to interrupt to go on assignment to Rhineland and the Ruhr. It was a very simple story called \"Out of Season\" and I had omitted the real end of it which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ernest Hemingway", "slug": "ernest-hemingway", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway" }, "book": { "title": "A Moveable Feast", "slug": "a-moveable-feast", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/a-moveable-feast" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway#A_Moveable_Feast_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:07" }, { "id": "eebb71a0-8842-4802-9f60-16997fbc6211", "slug": "when-writing-a-novel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/death-in-the-afternoon/when-writing-a-novel", "text": "When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ernest Hemingway", "slug": "ernest-hemingway", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway" }, "book": { "title": "Death in the Afternoon", "slug": "death-in-the-afternoon", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/death-in-the-afternoon" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway#Death_in_the_Afternoon_(1932)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:05" }, { "id": "e7998b4d-cbfa-411c-bb43-ee5f16da4daa", "slug": "a-serious-writer", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/death-in-the-afternoon/a-serious-writer", "text": "A serious writer is not to be confused with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ernest Hemingway", "slug": "ernest-hemingway", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway" }, "book": { "title": "Death in the Afternoon", "slug": "death-in-the-afternoon", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/death-in-the-afternoon" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway#Death_in_the_Afternoon_(1932)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:05" }, { "id": "cc9f167e-d047-477b-bf74-7cde472377c0", "slug": "all-modern-american", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/green-hills-of-africa/all-modern-american", "text": "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. If you read it you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating. But it's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ernest Hemingway", "slug": "ernest-hemingway", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway" }, "book": { "title": "Green Hills of Africa", "slug": "green-hills-of-africa", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/green-hills-of-africa" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway#Green_Hills_of_Africa_(1935)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:05" }, { "id": "ff26a676-f156-4bd7-a4ec-9d3ab2efb16f", "slug": "remember-this-too", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/death-in-the-afternoon/remember-this-too", "text": "Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ernest Hemingway", "slug": "ernest-hemingway", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway" }, "book": { "title": "Death in the Afternoon", "slug": "death-in-the-afternoon", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/death-in-the-afternoon" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway#Death_in_the_Afternoon_(1932)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:04" }, { "id": "d27f9981-3b85-483c-a8c4-0429a2f861e8", "slug": "it-is-always", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/death-in-the-afternoon/it-is-always", "text": "It is always a mistake to know an author.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ernest Hemingway", "slug": "ernest-hemingway", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway" }, "book": { "title": "Death in the Afternoon", "slug": "death-in-the-afternoon", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/death-in-the-afternoon" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway#Death_in_the_Afternoon_(1932)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:04" }, { "id": "0103e729-f6f2-4019-9511-588deca9fb1e", "slug": "prose-is-architecture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/death-in-the-afternoon/prose-is-architecture", "text": "Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ernest Hemingway", "slug": "ernest-hemingway", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway" }, "book": { "title": "Death in the Afternoon", "slug": "death-in-the-afternoon", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/death-in-the-afternoon" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway#Death_in_the_Afternoon_(1932)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:04" }, { "id": "fd1e3085-d0c3-4c1c-a5d6-d014864b2ddc", "slug": "a-mirror-does", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/em-forster/aspects-of-the-novel/a-mirror-does", "text": "A mirror does not develop because an historical pageant passes in front of it. It only develops when it gets a fresh coat of quicksilver — in other words, when it acquires new sensitiveness; and the novel's success lies in its own sensitiveness, not in the success of its subject matter.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "E.M. Forster", "slug": "em-forster", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/em-forster" }, "book": { "title": "Aspects of the Novel", "slug": "aspects-of-the-novel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/em-forster/aspects-of-the-novel" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/E._M._Forster#Aspects_of_the_Novel_(1927)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:01" }, { "id": "e21b8d01-c8a6-45e0-abd8-c2b2601f48b3", "slug": "if-god-could", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/em-forster/aspects-of-the-novel/if-god-could", "text": "If God could tell the story of the Universe, the Universe would become fictitious.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "E.M. Forster", "slug": "em-forster", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/em-forster" }, "book": { "title": "Aspects of the Novel", "slug": "aspects-of-the-novel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/em-forster/aspects-of-the-novel" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/E._M._Forster#Aspects_of_the_Novel_(1927)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:01" }, { "id": "d086c7f2-1c98-469a-9075-9df884b10932", "slug": "a-man-does", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/em-forster/aspects-of-the-novel/a-man-does", "text": "A man does not talk to himself quite truly — not even to himself: the happiness or misery that he secretly feels proceeds from causes that he cannot quite explain, because as soon as he raises them to the level of the explicable they lose their native quality. The novelist has a real pull here. He can show the subconscious short-circuiting straight into action (the dramatist can do this too); he can also show it in its relation to soliloquy. He commands all the secret life, and he must not be robbed of this privilege. \"How did the writer know that?\" it is sometimes said. \"What's his standpoint? He is not being consistent, he's shifting his point of view from the limited to the omniscient, and now he's edging back again.\" Questions like this have too much the atmosphere of the law courts about them.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "E.M. Forster", "slug": "em-forster", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/em-forster" }, "book": { "title": "Aspects of the Novel", "slug": "aspects-of-the-novel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/em-forster/aspects-of-the-novel" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/E._M._Forster#Aspects_of_the_Novel_(1927)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:01" }, { "id": "56781300-ffc1-4be4-9689-764b8c37f2ab", "slug": "books-the-children", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/a-tale-of-a-tub/books-the-children", "text": "Books, the children of the brain.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jonathan Swift", "slug": "jonathan-swift", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift" }, "book": { "title": "A Tale of a Tub", "slug": "a-tale-of-a-tub", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/a-tale-of-a-tub" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jonathan_Swift#A_Tale_of_a_Tub_(1704)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:49" }, { "id": "55e1b705-a2c7-48cd-b4bf-beb5fabb3031", "slug": "a-book-may", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/oliver-goldsmith/the-vicar-of-wakefield/a-book-may", "text": "A book may be very amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Oliver Goldsmith", "slug": "oliver-goldsmith", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/oliver-goldsmith" }, "book": { "title": "The Vicar of Wakefield", "slug": "the-vicar-of-wakefield", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/oliver-goldsmith/the-vicar-of-wakefield" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oliver_Goldsmith#The_Vicar_of_Wakefield_(1766)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:49" }, { "id": "1366bbc3-dc19-4532-9be1-0ff43cfc3c31", "slug": "there-are-certain", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/a-tale-of-a-tub/there-are-certain", "text": "There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either of wit or sublime.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jonathan Swift", "slug": "jonathan-swift", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift" }, "book": { "title": "A Tale of a Tub", "slug": "a-tale-of-a-tub", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/a-tale-of-a-tub" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jonathan_Swift#A_Tale_of_a_Tub_(1704)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:49" }, { "id": "e009267a-6e09-43a2-9efe-c41a68404394", "slug": "close-thy-byron", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-carlyle/sartor-resartus/close-thy-byron", "text": "Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Thomas Carlyle", "slug": "thomas-carlyle", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-carlyle" }, "book": { "title": "Sartor Resartus", "slug": "sartor-resartus", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-carlyle/sartor-resartus" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "reading", "slug": "reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reading" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Carlyle#Sartor_Resartus_(1833%E2%80%931834)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:44" }, { "id": "a65efe7b-65a6-408e-9c28-3434a315b5a6", "slug": "o-thou-who", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-carlyle/sartor-resartus/o-thou-who", "text": "O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Thomas Carlyle", "slug": "thomas-carlyle", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-carlyle" }, "book": { "title": "Sartor Resartus", "slug": "sartor-resartus", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-carlyle/sartor-resartus" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Carlyle#Sartor_Resartus_(1833%E2%80%931834)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:44" }, { "id": "ba256b59-ce87-4fcf-b541-ea970d77429a", "slug": "writers-especially-when", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edmund-burke/reflections-on-the-revolution-in-france/writers-especially-when", "text": "Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Edmund Burke", "slug": "edmund-burke", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edmund-burke" }, "book": { "title": "Reflections on the Revolution in France", "slug": "reflections-on-the-revolution-in-france", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edmund-burke/reflections-on-the-revolution-in-france" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke#Reflections_on_the_Revolution_in_France_(1790)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:39" }, { "id": "966c0577-53d6-498f-b3d9-3227c8b7feff", "slug": "romance-gathers-round", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eleanor-farjeon/martin-pippin-in-the-apple-orchard/romance-gathers-round", "text": "Romance gathers round an old story like lichen on an old branch. And the story of Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard is so old now — some say a year old, some say even two. How can the children be expected to remember?", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Eleanor Farjeon", "slug": "eleanor-farjeon", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eleanor-farjeon" }, "book": { "title": "Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard", "slug": "martin-pippin-in-the-apple-orchard", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eleanor-farjeon/martin-pippin-in-the-apple-orchard" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eleanor_Farjeon#Martin_Pippin_in_the_Apple_Orchard_(1922)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:36" }, { "id": "e34fb6ea-774b-4908-a004-cc5d594bf477", "slug": "there-is-a-second", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/heretics/there-is-a-second", "text": "There is a second type of mind which produces satire with the quality of greatness. That is embodied in the satirist whose passions are released and let go by some intolerable sense of wrong. He is maddened by the sense of men being maddened; his tongue becomes an unruly member, and testifies against all mankind. Such a man was Swift, in whom the saeva indignatio was a bitterness to others, because it was a bitterness to himself.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "G. Chesterton", "slug": "g-chesterton", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton" }, "book": { "title": "Heretics", "slug": "heretics", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/heretics" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "anger", "slug": "anger", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/anger" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heretics_(book)#Chapter_XVII:_%22On_the_Wit_of_Whistler%22", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:35" }, { "id": "a490919b-47d1-4e93-b136-f5943d10003e", "slug": "the-third-type", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/heretics/the-third-type", "text": "The third type of great satire is that in which he satirist is enabled to rise superior to his victim in the only serious sense which superiority can bear, in that of pitying the sinner and respecting the man even while he satirises both. Such an achievement can be found in a thing like Pope's \"Atticus\" a poem in which the satirist feels that he is satirising the weaknesses which belong specially to literary genius. Consequently he takes a pleasure in pointing out his enemy's strength before he points out his weakness. That is, perhaps, the highest and most honourable form of satire.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "G. Chesterton", "slug": "g-chesterton", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton" }, "book": { "title": "Heretics", "slug": "heretics", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/heretics" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heretics_(book)#Chapter_XVII:_%22On_the_Wit_of_Whistler%22", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:35" }, { "id": "97f5c1c0-4838-4cf3-9866-69047215c901", "slug": "a-good-novel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/heretics/a-good-novel", "text": "A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "G. Chesterton", "slug": "g-chesterton", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton" }, "book": { "title": "Heretics", "slug": "heretics", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/heretics" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heretics_(book)#Chapter_XV:_%22On_Smart_Novelists_and_the_Smart_Set%22", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:35" }, { "id": "38239432-a3e3-4c6d-912f-ab01675bd567", "slug": "the-strong-old", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/heretics/the-strong-old", "text": "The strong old literature is all in praise of the weak. The rude old tales are as tender to minorities as any modern political idealist. The rude old ballads are as sentimentally concerned for the under-dog as the Aborigines Protection Society. When men were tough and raw, when they lived amid hard knocks and hard laws, when they knew what fighting really was, they had only two kinds of songs. The first was a rejoicing that the weak had conquered the strong, the second a lamentation that the strong had, for once in a way, conquered the weak. For this defiance of the statu quo, this constant effort to alter the existing balance, this premature challenge to the powerful, is the whole nature and inmost secret of the psychological adventure which is called man. It is his strength to disdain strength.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "G. Chesterton", "slug": "g-chesterton", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton" }, "book": { "title": "Heretics", "slug": "heretics", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/heretics" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heretics_(book)#Chapter_V:_%22Mr._H._G._Wells_and_the_Giants%22", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:34" }, { "id": "fd390c96-5524-42f9-9555-ad8b7da6d97e", "slug": "shakespeare-is-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/ulysses/shakespeare-is-the", "text": "Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "James Joyce", "slug": "james-joyce", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce" }, "book": { "title": "Ulysses", "slug": "ulysses", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/ulysses" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel)#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:32" }, { "id": "b43e6dac-86a0-479e-8520-93d5b9c72514", "slug": "stately-plump-buck", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/ulysses/stately-plump-buck", "text": "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "James Joyce", "slug": "james-joyce", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce" }, "book": { "title": "Ulysses", "slug": "ulysses", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/ulysses" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel)#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:32" }, { "id": "363bb8e4-d71c-4f5a-a33c-af5a09a47691", "slug": "our-national-epic", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/ulysses/our-national-epic", "text": "Our national epic has yet to be written.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "James Joyce", "slug": "james-joyce", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce" }, "book": { "title": "Ulysses", "slug": "ulysses", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/ulysses" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel)#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:32" }, { "id": "289a5dd4-4938-4eea-b8bf-ec25cf5d2f10", "slug": "coffined-thoughts-around", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/ulysses/coffined-thoughts-around", "text": "Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of words. Thoth, god of libraries, a birdgod, moonycrowned. And I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest. In painted chambers loaded with tilebooks.\n\nThey are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of death is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak their will.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "James Joyce", "slug": "james-joyce", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce" }, "book": { "title": "Ulysses", "slug": "ulysses", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/ulysses" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel)#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:32" }, { "id": "8f11c086-1d26-40da-aec4-bfb22eea1d2e", "slug": "i-believe-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-stuart-mill/autobiography/i-believe-that", "text": "I believe that the early success and reputation of Carlyle's French Revolution, were considerably accelerated by what I wrote about it in the Review. Immediately on its publication, and before the commonplace critics, all whose rules and modes of judgment it set at defiance, had time to preoccupy the public with their disapproval of it, I wrote and published a review of the book, hailing it as one of those productions of genius which are above all rules, and are a law to themselves.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Stuart Mill", "slug": "john-stuart-mill", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-stuart-mill" }, "book": { "title": "Autobiography", "slug": "autobiography", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-stuart-mill/autobiography" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 217, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill#Ch._6:_Commencement_of_the_Most_Valuable_Friendship_of_My_Life.", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:31" }, { "id": "6262a78e-c2a1-4140-ad34-db3a54facc7c", "slug": "compared-with-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-stuart-mill/autobiography/compared-with-the", "text": "Compared with the greatest poets, he may be said to be the poet of unpoetical natures, possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes. But unpoetical natures are precisely those which require poetic cultivation. This cultivation Wordsworth is much more fitted to give, than poets who are intrinsically far more poets than he.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Stuart Mill", "slug": "john-stuart-mill", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-stuart-mill" }, "book": { "title": "Autobiography", "slug": "autobiography", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-stuart-mill/autobiography" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 149, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "poetry", "slug": "poetry", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/poetry" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill#Ch._5:_A_Crisis_in_My_Mental_History._One_Stage_Onward.", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:31" }, { "id": "0d92f847-1ce0-4c07-a91c-fa598e2e7f2b", "slug": "in-the-same", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-stuart-mill/autobiography/in-the-same", "text": "In the same year in which I began Latin, I made my first commencement in the Greek poet with the Iliad. After I had made some progress in this, my father put Pope's translation into my hands. It was the first English verse I had cared to read, and it became one of the books in which for many years I most delighted: I think I must have read it from twenty to thirty times through. I should not have thought it worth while to mention a taste apparently so natural to boyhood, if I had not, as I think, observed that the keen enjoyment of this brilliant specimen of narrative and versification is not so universal with boys, as I should have expected both à priori and from my individual experience.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Stuart Mill", "slug": "john-stuart-mill", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-stuart-mill" }, "book": { "title": "Autobiography", "slug": "autobiography", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-stuart-mill/autobiography" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 10, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "reading", "slug": "reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reading" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "poetry", "slug": "poetry", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/poetry" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill#Ch._1:_Childhood_and_Early_Education", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:30" }, { "id": "bb6a3c1c-1503-48d4-8f2c-602b343b2da2", "slug": "almost-overnight-dorothy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/dorothy-parker/dorothy-parker-poems/almost-overnight-dorothy", "text": "Almost overnight, Dorothy Parker was transformed from a woman of letters into a gin-soaked quote machine, with a martini in one hand and a dagger in the other. p. xiii", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Dorothy Parker", "slug": "dorothy-parker", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/dorothy-parker" }, "book": { "title": "Dorothy Parker: Poems", "slug": "dorothy-parker-poems", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/dorothy-parker/dorothy-parker-poems" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dorothy_Parker#Dorothy_Parker:_Complete_Broadway,_1918%E2%80%931923_(2014)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:29" }, { "id": "337ccc05-121a-4d73-9179-cb8e76971c05", "slug": "the-novels-i-have", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov/i-asimov/the-novels-i-have", "text": "The novels I have been writing lately are the kind I wrote in the 1950s. (I have been criticized for this by some critics, but the day I pay attention to critics is the day the sky will fall.)", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Isaac Asimov", "slug": "isaac-asimov", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov" }, "book": { "title": "I, Asimov", "slug": "i-asimov", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov/i-asimov" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 77, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov#I._Asimov:_A_Memoir_(1994)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:25" }, { "id": "2f99d6b8-6d4e-4160-8dc6-0eb217b50b91", "slug": "in-writing-a-science", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov/i-asimov/in-writing-a-science", "text": "In writing a science fiction novel, you must invent a futuristic social structure which is complex enough to be interesting in itself apart from the story and which is self-consistent. You must also invent a plot that works only within that social structure. The plot must develop without unduly obscuring the description of the social structure, and the social structure must be described without unduly slowing the plot.\n\nMaking a science fiction novel fulfill this double purpose is difficult even for an experienced and talented old hand such as myself. Every other kind of writing is easier than science fiction.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Isaac Asimov", "slug": "isaac-asimov", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov" }, "book": { "title": "I, Asimov", "slug": "i-asimov", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov/i-asimov" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 265, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov#I._Asimov:_A_Memoir_(1994)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:25" }, { "id": "ab1ffe36-33bf-4d9f-a976-954d99c55714", "slug": "the-critics-greeted", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola/therese-raquin/the-critics-greeted", "text": "The critics greeted this book with a churlish and horrified outcry. Certain virtuous people, in newspapers no less virtuous, made a grimace of disgust as they picked it up with the tongs to throw it into the fire. Even the minor literary reviews, the ones that retail nightly the tittle-tattle from alcoves and private rooms, held their noses and talked of filth and stench. I am not complaining about this reception; on the contrary I am delighted to observe that my colleagues have such maidenly susceptibilities.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Emile Zola", "slug": "emile-zola", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola" }, "book": { "title": "Thérèse Raquin", "slug": "therese-raquin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola/therese-raquin" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "hypocrisy", "slug": "hypocrisy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/hypocrisy" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Zola#Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se_Raquin_(1867%3B_1868)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:38:09" }, { "id": "d1047341-e80c-47b3-b966-78f47bfe00d9", "slug": "a-character-is-never", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/the-rebel/a-character-is-never", "text": "A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Albert Camus", "slug": "albert-camus", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus" }, "book": { "title": "The Rebel", "slug": "the-rebel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/the-rebel" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 86, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Camus#The_Rebel_(1951)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:37:57" }, { "id": "a8d14b43-818b-4b33-a847-ee59841935c5", "slug": "fools-have-a-habit", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/voltaire/candide/fools-have-a-habit", "text": "Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Voltaire", "slug": "voltaire", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/voltaire" }, "book": { "title": "Candide", "slug": "candide", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/voltaire/candide" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "reading", "slug": "reading", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reading" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire#Candide_(1759)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:37:54" }, { "id": "bb7fbe40-9480-477a-9f18-123ef8c6fbb9", "slug": "many-of-my-friends", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-leacock/sunshine-sketches-of-a-little-town/many-of-my-friends", "text": "Many of my friends are under the impression that I write these humorous nothings in idle moments when the wearied brain is unable to perform the serious labours of the economist. My own experience is exactly the other way. The writing of solid, instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough. There is no trouble in writing a scientific treatise on the folk-lore of Central China, or a statistical enquiry into the declining population of Prince Edward Island. But to write something out of one's own mind, worth reading for its own sake, is an arduous contrivance only to be achieved in fortunate moments, few and far between. Personally, I would sooner have written \"Alice in Wonderland\" than the whole Encyclopaedia Britannica.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Stephen Leacock", "slug": "stephen-leacock", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-leacock" }, "book": { "title": "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town", "slug": "sunshine-sketches-of-a-little-town", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-leacock/sunshine-sketches-of-a-little-town" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Leacock#Sunshine_Sketches_of_a_Little_Town_(1912)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:37:50" }, { "id": "3a46edde-ca41-45c1-a507-47ea2d535a8d", "slug": "persons-attempting-to-find", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn/persons-attempting-to-find", "text": "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.\n\nBY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Mark Twain", "slug": "mark-twain", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain" }, "book": { "title": "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "slug": "the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Twain#Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn_(1885)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:37:46" }, { "id": "8aa64b8d-bb03-4873-aa64-b13ee908b45f", "slug": "when-one-writes", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/the-adventures-of-tom-sawyer/when-one-writes", "text": "When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop—that is, with a marriage; but when he writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Mark Twain", "slug": "mark-twain", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain" }, "book": { "title": "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "slug": "the-adventures-of-tom-sawyer", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/the-adventures-of-tom-sawyer" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Tom_Sawyer#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:37:45" }, { "id": "0e591f89-50b4-4cf0-8913-e1ffc25a7c5d", "slug": "all-men-have", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/roughing-it/all-men-have", "text": "All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the \"elect\" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so \"slow,\" so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Mark Twain", "slug": "mark-twain", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain" }, "book": { "title": "Roughing It", "slug": "roughing-it", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/roughing-it" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 127, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Twain#Roughing_It_(1872)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:37:44" }, { "id": "be78fb6a-f596-461d-98b0-5af67cdb20d7", "slug": "a-whole-is-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aristotle/poetics/a-whole-is-that", "text": "A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Aristotle", "slug": "aristotle", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aristotle" }, "book": { "title": "Poetics", "slug": "poetics", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aristotle/poetics" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aristotle#Poetics", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:37:37" }, { "id": "2452556c-5b24-44e9-9e0b-40f01754c9f3", "slug": "a-tragedy-then", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aristotle/poetics/a-tragedy-then", "text": "A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language ... not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Aristotle", "slug": "aristotle", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aristotle" }, "book": { "title": "Poetics", "slug": "poetics", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aristotle/poetics" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "art", "slug": "art", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/art" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aristotle#Poetics", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:37:37" }, { "id": "29966edc-1d5d-400a-b54c-211cbe45ed81", "slug": "i-exclude-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/major-barbara/i-exclude-the", "text": "I exclude the hypothesis of complete originality on [Charles] Lever's part, because a man can no more be completely original in that sense than a tree can grow out of air.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "George Bernard Shaw", "slug": "george-bernard-shaw", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw" }, "book": { "title": "Major Barbara", "slug": "major-barbara", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/major-barbara" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw#Major_Barbara_(1905)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:32:35" } ] }