For this reason, to study English literature without some general knowledge of the relation of the Bible to that literature would be to leave one's literary education very incomplete.
Literature is a fragment of a fragment. Of all that ever happened, or has been said, but a fraction has been written; and of this but little is extant.
Evil is whatever distracts.
The East was no longer a threat to the western world, and when there's nothing to fear we turn our backs, we look elsewhere. Eastern literature is still the poor relative that everyone wants to forget, the Cinderella who hasn't (yet) found her prince.
If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry.
It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.
There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.
No literature is richer than that of the sea. No story is more enthralling, no tradition is more secure.
The money can be decent, but I really don't recommend the work-for-hire route as an entry into publishing. Too many things can go wrong.
Keats, it must be remembered, was a sensualist. His poems. . . reveal him as a man not altogether free from the vulgarities of sensualism, as well as one who was able to transmute it into perfect literature.
The American grips himself, at the very sources of his consciousness, in a grip of care: and then, to so much of the rest of life, is indifferent. Whereas, the European hasn't got so much care in him, so he cares much more for life and living.
The difficulty is not to write, but to write what you mean.
I always thought books were just the canon, things I couldn't identify with. And then I was introduced to really amazing multicultural literature - it was all things I was trying to do unsuccessfully in my poetry. It really just changed everything. I was introduced to authors like Sandra Cisneros, Gabriel García Márquez, Junot Díaz, and a lot of African American literature, as well.
Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.
The sage belongs to the same obsolete repertory as the virtuous maiden and the enlightened monarch.
. . . to be "literary" appeared to my deluded innocence as an unending romance.
Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.
People like to complain about the state of contemporary literature, but I can only assume they don't read it very widely.
I had relationships with men as well as women. I wasn't choosing; I didn't think I had to.
Yeah, Hitman I suppose is most of the time a lighter read than Preacher; it was always going to be.
