When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball.

Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.

Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

A wicked book cannot repent.

A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.