Belletristic Literature

Quotes & Thinkers in Belletristic Literature

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🇺🇸Philip Roth

Literature

1933–2018

"The New York Times Featured Author: Philip Roth"

"The year 2000: April 43rd.—To-day is a day of splendid triumph. Spain has a king; he has been found, and I am he."

"Aid from heaven you may have," he said, "by saying your prayers; and I don't doubt you ask for this and all other things generally. But an angel won't come to tell you who ought to be Chancellor of the Exchequer."

"I was this murky, fringe kid. I wasn't black, I wasn't white, and I'm way far from being Japanese…So I'm always on the edges, watching, listening, but not really in the mix."

"But that is what life is like, uncertain, screwed at times but still fun."

"The Gardener says that mortals often pass laws they cannot enforce in order to be seen as “strong,” or “determined,” even though they know the laws will not solve the problem."

"What in effect looks like clear and directed writing took much chaos and anxiety. I felt like I was losing my mind toward the end."

4 quotes

🇬🇧Oyinkan Braithwaite

Literature

b. 1988

"As an individual I’m attracted to strong female characters – my characters have always been people who own themselves. Even if they’re strongly doing something wrong, they’ve always been powerful people."

"If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home."

"This is an excellent martini—sort of tastes like it isn’t there at all, just a cold cloud."

"The signing of the Union Treaty is not just sad. This is the crime of the century. This, of course, is the genocide of the Belarusian nation. This is the end of Belarusian history."

"The "Terror" of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years."

"I can't help believing that these things that come from the subconscious mind have a sort of truth to them. It may not be a scientific truth, but it's psychological truth."

"...nothing ever happens quickly (except when it does). Nothing is ever, ever easy (except when it is). And, most of all, nothing ever goes perfectly according to plan (except in the movies)."

"I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any."

"Nothing can last forever; there is no memory, however intense, that does not fade."

6 quotes

🇺🇸Jessamyn West (writer)

Literature

1902–1984

"We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint?"

"He's as great a master of ill language as ever was bred at a Bear-Garden."

"They tore unborn babies out of bellies, took what we were intended to be, our children before they were children, babies before they were babies."

"Everyone always dies for his country. If you have lived in it, well and wisely and actively, you die for it too."

"They say that not matter how old you become, when you are with your siblings, you revert back to childhood."

1 quotes

Francis William Bourdillon

"There are some rhetorical moves that I wouldn’t be able to make if I didn’t know these languages. In terms of writing figurative language, I probably pull a lot from Yoruba imagery…"

4 quotes

🇺🇸Carmen Maria Machado

Literature

b. 1986

"I usually start from a concept, an idea, a form, a question, or a genre. Never a character or a setting. And I don’t write into nothing; I always have somewhere I’m directing my thoughts."

"When you’re a cartoonist, you sort of have to be, like, sensitive – or maybe open’s a better word – to what’s going on around you. When you’re an attorney, you’re just like a bulldog with your head down."

"A conversation with Kathy Acker by Ellen G. Friedman, in The Review of Contemporary Fiction , Volume 9.3"

"The organization of religion is self-defeating, a trap for sin."

"It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons."

"Maybe nothing is completely true, and not even that."

"People have lost something important they took for granted, and that loss leaves them devastated."

"Madness rides the star-wind... claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses... dripping death astride a bacchanale of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial..."

"One has to be able to count, if only so that at fifty one doesn't marry a girl of twenty."

"When I had asked why they were taking English, a boy said: "To help us in real life."

"In fact, I'm beginning to fear that this confusion will go on for a long time. And all because he writes down what I said incorrectly."

"When you move into a new place, it does involve a refashioning of the self. We derive our sense of identity at least partly in relation to the landscape around us, in which we’ve grown up..…"

"Beer is amazing. Nutritional. Medicinal. A beverage, but also a meal."

"We are in danger of forgetting that God is not only a comfort but a joy. He is the source of all pleasures; he is fun and laughter, and we are meant to enjoy him."

"If in four months I could not find Tom Chaney with a mark on his face like banished Cain I would not undertake to advise others how to do it."

19 quotes

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