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I think what matters most in literary work is the context, not the text.

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

Anyone who undertakes the literary grind had better like playing around with words.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

Judgment is more than skill. It sets forth on intellectual seas beyond the shores of hard indisputable factual information.

There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.

English dramatic literature is, of course, dominated by Shakespeare; and it is almost inevitable that an English reader should measure the value of other poetic drama by the standards which Shakespeare has already implanted in his mind.

Literature at its fullest takes human nature as its theme. That's the kind of writing that interests me.

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.