All Quotes By Tag: Art-of-literature
“A book can never be anything more than the impress of its author’s thoughts; and the value of these will lie either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form which his thoughts take, in other words, what it is that he has thought about it.”
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“No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.”
“Truth is most beautiful undraped.”
“There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject’s sake, and those who write for writing’s sake. […] The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.”
“I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)… ‘I spoke to three scholars,’ [the character says ‘at last.’] …two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]’ …I can see that he’s excited. [narrator]’ …Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a ‘literary’ writer based on this quote. A ‘literary’ author knows that a character’s excitement should be ‘shown’ in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator’s commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the ‘I can see that he’s excited’ sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho … Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), ‘a remote human possibility.’ He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!”
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“A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner; nor with his fate if the corner granted him allows of his following his vocation without having to think about other people.”