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When literature exists, perhaps we do not notice how important it is, but when it does not exist, our lives become coarsened and brutal. For this reason, I am proud of my profession, but also aware of its importance.

Nothing is harmful to literature except censorship, and that almost never stops literature going where it wants to go either, because literature has a way of surpassing everything that blocks it and growing stronger for the exercise.

Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.

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

I strongly believe that literature can do something that nothing else can do, and that is embody the human spirit.

I do think that part of literature's job is to comment on and participate in the social issues of the time.

I am also well aware that literature only has a minimal influence on political disputes or economic crises in the world, but its significance to human beings is ancient.

People have different views of how you deal with different issues in literature, and, frankly, long may it last that there is a range of views.

Literature is a far more ancient and viable thing than any social formation or state. And just as the state interferes in literature, literature has the right to interfere in the affairs of state.

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.