Literature is the right use of language irrespective of the subject or reason of utterance.

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

Literature is an analysis of experience and a synthesis of the findings into a unity.

Literature is the thought of thinking souls.

What is literature an expression of, if not an otherwise inaccessible and in reality non-existent closeness?

The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.

For her, finally, the literary art is an instrument of social salvation — it is her means of touching the world with her ideals, her love, her aspiration; for him the literary art is the avenue of escape from the meaningless chaos of existence — it is his subtly critical condemnation of the world.

Literature was the passport to enter a larger life; that is, the zone of freedom. Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.

To me, literature is a calling, even a kind of salvation. It connects me with an enterprise that is over 2,000 years old. What do we have from the past? Art and thought. That’s what lasts. That’s what continues to feed people and give them an idea of something better.

This absence of literary culture is actually a marker of future blindness because it is usually accompanied by a denigration of history, a byproduct of unconditional neomania. Outside of the niche and isolated genre of science fiction, literature is about the past. We do not learn physics or biology from medieval textbooks, but we still read Homer, Plato, or the very modern Shakespeare.

What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident?

In the art of literature there are two contending parties. Those who aim to tell stories that are more or less well thought out, and those who aim at beautiful language, beauty of form. This contest may last a very long time; each side has a fifty-fifty chance. Only the poet can rightfully demand that verse be beautiful and nothing but.

Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.