Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.

The word literature enters the room with its nose in the air. But get it in a corner, ask the right questions, and it will reluctantly fess up to its humble origins. It hails from the Latin 'litterae,' you whisper in your date's ear. It puts on a big act, but it literally just means 'things made of letters.

Literature is an analysis of experience and a synthesis of the findings into a unity.

Literature is the Thought of thinking Souls.

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

Literature is the right use of language irrespective of the subject or reason of utterance.

Literature is dialogue; responsiveness. Literature might be described as the history of human responsiveness to what is alive and what is moribund as cultures evolve and interact with one another. Writers can do something to combat these clichés of our separateness, our difference — for writers are makers, not just transmitters, of myths. Literature offers not only myths but counter-myths, just as life offers counter-experiences — experiences that confound what you thought you thought, or felt, or believed.

Literature is news that STAYS news.

Literature is a key to understanding human nature, social relations, and feelings.

Literature is the aesthetic exploitation of language

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper — whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.

Literature is not a subject of study, but an object of study.

that, I think, is really where lots of literature comes from. It really comes, not from knowing so much, but from not knowing. It comes from what you're curious about. It comes from what obsesses you. It comes from what you want to know.