So we have the Philistine of genius in religionöLuther; the Philistine of genius in politicsöCromwell; the Philistine of genius in literatureöBunyan.

-Arnold, Matthew
  Mixed Essays,'Lord Falkland'.

   Hebelievesthat sciencefictionistheapocalyptic literature of the 20th century, the authentic language of Auschwitz, Eniwetok and Aldermaston.He also believes that inner space, not outer, isthe real subject of science fiction.

-Ballard,J(ames) G(raham)
  Author's statement containedin abiographical note to The Drowned World.

If photography is allowed to stand in forart in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thankstothenatural support it will find inthestupidityof themultitude.It must return toits real task, which isto be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.

-Baudelaire, Charles
  'Salon of1859', section 2, in Curiosite¤  s Esthe¤  tiques (1868).

No wonder the really powerful men in our society, whether politicians or scientists, hold writers in contempt.Theydoit becausetheyget no evidence from modern literature that anybody is thinking about any significant question.

-Bellow, Saul
  Interview in The Paris Review, no.37, winter issue.

The Breed never dies. Sapper, Buchan, Dornford Yates, practitioners in that school of Snobbery withViolence that runs like a thread of good-class tweed through twentieth-century literature.

-Bennett, Alan
  FortyYears On (published1969), act 2. Snobbery With Violence was used as a book title by Colin Wilson (1971).

Los metaf|¤sicos de Tl o« n no buscan la verdad ni siquiera la verosimilitud: buscan el asombro. Juzgan que la metaf|¤sica es una rama de la literatura fanta¤  stica. The metaphysicians of Tlo«  n do not seek for the truth or even for verisimilitude, but rather for the astounding. They judge that metaphysics is a branch of fantastic literature.

-Borges,Jorge Luis
Ficciones,'Tlo«   n, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius' (1963).

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

-Chesterton, G(ilbert) K(eith)
The Defendant,'Defence of Penny Dreadfuls'.

What is art is not likely to be decided for decades or longer after the work has been producedöand then is often redecidedöso we must not think badly if we regard literature as entertainment rather than as transcendent enlightenment.

-Condon, Richard
  Comment in D L Fitzpatrick (ed) Contemporary Novelists.

Literature istheart of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once.

-Connolly, Cyril Vernon
  Enemies of Promise, ch.3.

Literature is a power line and the motor, mark you, is the reader.

-Curtis, Charles P
  A Commonplace Book.

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.Youaretheghoul of literature.Lovely.

-DeLillo, Don
  Owen Brademas. The Names, ch.4.

   Books, we are told, propose to instruct or to amuse. Indeed!† The true antithesisto knowledge, in this case, is not pleasure, but power. All that is literature seeks to communicate power; all that is not literature, to communicate knowledge.

-Depp,Johnny (John Christopher)
  Letters to aYoungMan whose Education has been Neglected, no.3, in the London Magazine,  Jan^  Jul.

EDUCATION.öAt Mr Wackford Squeers's Academy, Dotheboys Hall, at the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge inYorkshire.Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, providedwith all necessaries, instructed inall languages, living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of the globes, algebra, single stick (if required), writing, arithmetic, fortification, and every other branch of classical literature. Terms, twenty guineas per annum. No extras, no vacations, and diet unparalleled.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^9  Nicholas Nickleby, ch.3.

You know who the critics are? The men who have failed in literature and art.

-Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
  Lothair, ch.35.

We know too much and are convinced of too little.Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  'A Dialogue on Dramatic Poetry', collected in Selected Essays (1932).

The people which ceases to care for its literary inheritance becomes barbaric; the people which ceases to produce literature ceases to move in thought and sensibility.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism.

Literature is conscious mythology: as society develops, its mythical stories become structural principles of story-telling, its mythical concepts, sun-gods and the like, become habits of metaphoric thought. In a fully mature literary tradition the writerenters intoa structure of traditional stories and images.

-Frye, Northrop
The Bush Garden,'Conclusion'.

No se le hab|¤a ocurrido pensar hasta entonces que la literatura fuera el mejor juguete que se hab|¤a inventado para burlarse de la gente. It had never occurred to him until then to think that literature was the best plaything that had ever been invented to make fun of people.

-Garc|¤  a Ma¤ r quez, Gabriel
  Cien an‹  os de soledad (translated as One HundredYears of Solitude,1970).

C'est avec de beaux sentiments qu'on fait de la mauvaise litte¤  rature. Bad literature is written with beautiful sentiments.

-Gide, Andre¤   Paul Guillaume
  Letter to Fran c° ois Mauriac.

Le plagiat est la base de toutes les litte¤  ratures, excepte¤   de la premie'  re, qui d'ailleurs est inconnue. Plagiarism is the base of all literature except the first text which, however, is unknown.

-Giraudoux, (Hippolyte) Jean
  Siegfried et le Limousin.