The one and only substitute for experience which we have not ourselves had is art, literature. We have been given a miraculous faculty: Despite the differences of language, customs and social structure we are able to communicate life experience from one whole nation to another, to communicate a difficult national experience many decades long which the second of the two has never experienced.

Nobel Lecture (Literature is) the living memory of nations.

But woe to the nation whose literature is cut off by the interposition of force.

Literature is news that stays news.

In literature, as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.

Nearly all novels are too long.

Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children; life is the other way round.

Literature is a bad crutch, but a good walking-stick.

To my mind that literature is best and most enduring which is characterized by a noble simplicity.

In literature it is only the wild that attracts us.

The greatness of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards.

For the twenty million Americans who are hungry tonight, for the homeless freezing tonight, literature is as useless as a knowledge of astronomy.

Shakespeare wouldn't have been any good if he'd stayed in Stratford. He had to go to London to be bathed in the full current of the Renaissance.

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.

With both agents and publishers hungry for bestsellers, literature will have to end up as a cottage industry.

Life without literary studies is death.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.

Reality is not an inspiration for literature. At its best, literature is an inspiration for reality.

The unusual is only found in a very small percentage, except in literary creations, and that is exactly what makes literature.