quotations about literature
The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Behind the Beyond
We must wash literature off ourselves. We want to be men above all, to be human.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Les Oeuvres et les Hommes
If literature is to transcend political interference and return to being a testimony of man and his existential predicament, it needs first to break away from ideology. To be without "isms," is to return to the individual and to return to viewing the world through the eyes of the writer, an individual who relies on his own perceptions and does not act as a spokesman for the people. The people already have rulers and election campaigners speaking in their name.
GAO XINGJIAN
"Literature as Testimony: The Search for Truth", Witness Literature: Proceedings of the Nobel Centennial Symposium