#literature

"Starting over can be the scariest thing in the entire world, whether it’s leaving a lover, a school, a team, a friend or anything else that feels like a core part of our identity but when your gut is telling you that something here isn’t right or feels unsafe, I really want you to listen and trust in that voice."

"In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes."

"I'm not ashamed of heroic ambitions. If man and woman can only dance upon this earth for a few countable turns of the sun... let each of us be an Artemis, Odysseus, or Zeus... Aphrodite to the extent of the will of each one."

"No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment."

"The words that strike us are those that awake an echo in a zone we have already made our own—the place where we live—and the vibration enables us to find fresh starting points within ourselves."

"You must give everything to make your life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in your imagination."

"Literature is the safe and traditional vehicle through which we learn about the world and pass on values from on generation to the next. Books save lives."

"I never want you to deny anything about yourself because you have grown up thinking it’s unacceptable or inconvenient for the people around you."

"Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood."

"For a long time now a hint of aversion had lain on everything he did and experienced, a shadow of impotence and loneliness, an all-encompassing distaste for which he could not find the complementary inclination. He felt at times as though he had been born with a talent for which there was at present no objective."

"You mark and celebrate errors, transforming failures into successes."

"A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature."

"I know a girl from whose body sunbeams rose to the clouds as if they’d fallen from the sun.Her laugh was like a bangle of bells. “Your hair is wet,” I told her one day, “Did you take a bath?” “It is dew!” she laughed, “I’ve been lying in the grass. All morning long, I lay here waiting for the dawn."

"I am the shore and the ocean, awaiting myself on both sides."

"I'm a big believer in pairing classics with contemporary literature, so students have the opportunity to see that literature is not a cold, dead thing that happened once but instead a vibrant mode of storytelling that's been with us a long time - and will be with us, I hope, for a long time to come."

"Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it's made truly. The thing to do is work and learn to make it."

"Color is the overpowering of black; white – the final victory over black."

"I wish the military were the militerary. Less fighting and more reading."

"Be aware of the high notes, of the blissful faces and their soft messages, and listen for the silent message of a highly decorated gift."

"If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist."