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

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

Nearly all novels are too long.

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

Literature is news that stays news.

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

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

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.

Thus, literature, together with language, preserves and protects a nation's soul.

Literature is the daughter of heaven, who descended upon earth to soften and charm all human ills.