The two basic stories of all times are Cinderella and Jack the Giant Killer-the charm of women and the courage of men.

What is so wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote, and brings to birth in us also the creative impulse.

A person who knows nothing about literature may be an ignoramus, but many people don't mind being that.

The simple point is that literature belongs to the world man constructs, not to the world he sees; to his home, not his environment.

Like every other form of art, literature is no more and nothing less than a matter of life and death. The only question worth asking about a story-or a poem, or a piece of sculpture, or a new concert hall-is, "Is it dead or alive?"

The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and that often, paradoxically, is literature that suffers for it.

The message of guidance that neither politics nor philosophy nor religion now seems able to provide, we look for in modern literature.

Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.

The literary world is made up of little confederacies, each looking upon its own members as the lights of the universe; and considering all others as mere transient meteors, doomed soon to fall and be forgotten, while its own luminaries are to shine steadily on to immortality.

The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible.