“The present era grabs everything that was ever written in order to transform it into films, TV programs; or cartoons. What is essential in a novel is precisely what can only be expressed in a novel, and so every adaptation contains nothing but the non-essential. If a person is still crazy enough to write novels nowadays and wants to protect them, he has to write them in such a way that they cannot be adapted, in other words, in such a way that they cannot be retold.”
“Now a writer can make himself a nice career while he is alive by espousing a political cause, working for it, making a profession of believing in it, and if it wins he will be very well placed. All politics is a matter of working hard without reward, or with a living wage for a time, in the hope of booty later. A man can be a Fascist or a Communist and if his outfit gets in he can get to be an ambassador or have a million copies of his books printed by the Government or any of the other rewards the boys dream about.”
“All literature is gossip.”
“All literature is political.”
“Literature is analysis after the event.”
“Literature is the immortality of speech.”
“Perversity is the muse of modern literature.”
“There can be no literary equivalent to truth.”
“Leisure without literature is death and burial alive.”
“A losing trade, I assure you, sir: literature is a drug.”
“Literature is a toil and a snare, a curse that bites deep.”
“As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.”
“Literature flourishes best when it is half trade and half an art.”
“If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.”
“The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.”
“There is an incompatibility between literary creation and political activity.”
“What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.”
“Only the more rugged mortals should attempt to keep up with current literature.”
“In literature, as in love, we are astonished at the choice made by other people.”
“If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.”
“Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.”
“Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.”
“Literature, the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions.”
“Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.”
“The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.”
“For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.”
“Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.”
“The pure work implies the disappearance of the poet as speaker, who hands over to the words.”
“Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.”
“How has the human spirit ever survived the terrific literature with which it has had to contend?”