Literary Duty Quotes

I cannot stand Tolstoy, and reading him was the most boring literary duty I ever had to perform, his philosophy and his sense of life are not merely mistaken, but evil, and yet, from a purely literary viewpoint, on his own terms, I have to evaluate him as a good writer.

The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter.

The times are squalid. They always were. It is a poet's duty to hold the line.

I always wanted to be a cowboy. But alas! I was burdened early with certain inescapable obligations to world literature.

A writer's duty is to register what it is like for him or her to be in the world.

In the world of literature, I see prizes as more of a duty to the craft itself, rather than as something for the individual.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

I think you have an obligation to share what you know as a writer.

It is customary for the recipient of this award to offer personal or scholarly comment on the nature and the direction of literature. At this particular time, however, I think it would be well to consider the high duties and the responsibilities of the makers of literature.

A writer cannot put himself today in service of those who make history; he is at the service of those who suffer it.

One writes what one can, or has to, write.

The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still required to look. Then he is required to reproduce, with words, what he sees.

The duty of literature is to note what counts, and to light up what is suited to the light. If it ceases to choose and to love, it becomes like a woman who gives herself without preference.

I refuse to see literature as amusement, as a game. I think that you ought not to approach literature without a moral responsibility for every word you write.