Literary Style Quotes

“Apollinaire said a poet should be 'of his time.' I say objects of the Digital Age belong in newspapers, not literature. When I read a novel, I don’t want credit cards; I want cash in ducats and gold doubloons.”
― Roman Payne

“...Tolstoy's characters seem to come forward to meet you, very conscious of the impression they are making on one another and on the reader.”
― Stephen Spender

“I was in full digression! far from the subject!...my colonel was losing track...rapidly, of my story! my story!...my own story!...the gifts that I had personally received from Heaven!...yet I had insisted, every time! truly extraordinary gifts!...I'd made him repeat them a hundred times!...enough so he'd remember! that I was the only true genius! the century's only writer! the proof: that no one ever spoke of me!...everyone was jealous! Nobel! no Nobel! they had all joined forces to have me executed!...they could just go fuck off!...drop dead! since it was a question of death between me and them! I'll send their readers packing! all their readers! I'll make the public grow sick of their books! cabal! no cabal! since there was no room for two styles!...it was mine or theirs!...crawl or breastroke!...you understand!...the only inventor of the century! is me! me! me right here! the only genius, you might say! damned or not!...”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Conversations with Professor Y

“A little inventor, that's it!...of a little gimmick!...just a little gimmick that's all!...I don't fling out messages to the world!...not me, no sir! I don't clutter up the air with my thoughts! not me! I don't get high on words, nor on port, nor on the flattery of youth!...I don't cogitate for the universe. I'm just a little inventor, of a two-bit gimmick at that! and that won't last long! like everything else! like the swivel-stem collar button! I'm aware of my paltry importance! anything rather than ideas!...I leave ideas to the flea merchants! all ideas! to the hucksters, the pimps, the confusion mongers!...”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Conversations with Professor Y

“   "Okay!...my three dots! have people ever reproached me for them! they've slobbered on about my three dots!...'Ah! his three dots!...Ah, his three dots!...He can't finish his sentences!' Every stupidity in the book! every one, Colonel!"
   "So?"
   "Go!pss!pss!...piss off, Colonel! and what's your opinion, Colonel?"
   "Instead of those three dots, you might just as well put in a few words, that's what I feel!"   ”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Conversations with Professor Y

“He killed and killed and killed and killed. Death! Death! Death!”
― Anna Smith Spark, The Court of Broken Knives

“Malone's commentary on Sonnet 93 was a defining moment in the history not only of Shakespeare studies but also of literary biography in general. What has emerged in our time as a dominant form of life writing can trace its lineage back to this extended footnote.”
― James Shapiro

“Visst fanns det form och stil i litteraturen, i konsten, i musiken! Det fanns överallt, tyckte han. Allt var i djupare mening en fråga om stil.
Men det fanns något annat också. Stilen i uppträdande och handlande, en oklanderlig form i levnadssätt, ett modus vivendi i den egna privata livsföringen, en hållning mitt i all hållningslösheten, en attityd av tillkämpad stil mitt i allt det stillösa och förkonstlade.
Man måste ha stil, hade Fabian en gång sagt till honom, djupt allvarlig, medan hans blå, nästan glasartade blick mörknade av ett varmt patos. Stil i liv och dikt - det är det som det kommer an på. Man måste skriva med stil, leva med stil, kanske också dö med stil.”
― Erik Asklund, Bröderna i Klara

“From the Wild West, I heard the thundering voice of Bacchus’, winy prophesies,yet
disillusioned in his self aching brains, that rattled his evil enemies.”
― Nithin Purple, Venus and Crepuscule

“Amrath! Amrath! Amrath and the Altrersyr! Death and all demons! Death! Death! Death!”
― Anna Smith Spark, The Court of Broken Knives

“Blood! Oh blood! Oh blood and killing! He struck his sword out with his sword and a man fell before him, cut open, gutted like a fish. A stink of shit.”
― Anna Smith Spark, The Court of Broken Knives

“Big as a cart horse. Deep fetid marsh rot snot shit filth green. Traced out in scar tissue like embroidered cloth. Wings black and white and silver, heavy and vicious as blades. The Stink of it came choking. Fire and ash. Hot metal. Fear. Joy. Pain. There are dragons in the desert, said the old maps of the empire, and they had laughed and said no, no, not that close to great cities, if there ever were dragons there they are gone like the memory of a dream. Its teeth closed ripping on Gulius's arm, huge, jagged; its eyes were like knives as it twisted away with the arm hanging bloody in its mouth. It spat blood and slime and roared out flame again, reared up beating its wings. Men fell back screaming, armor scorched and molten, melted into burned melted flesh. The smell of roasting meat surrounded them. Better than steak. Gulius was lying somehow still alive, staring at the hole where his right arm had been. The dragons front legs came down smash onto his body. Plume of blood. Gulius disappeared. Little smudge of red on the green. A grating shriek as its claws scrabbled over hot stones. Screaming. Screaming. Beating wings. The stream rose up boiling. Two men were in the stream trying to douse burning flesh and the boiling water was in their faces and they were screaming too. Everything hot and boiling and burning, dry wind and dry earth and dry fire and dry hot scales, the whole great lizard body scorching like a furnace, roaring hot burning killing demon death thing.”
― Anna Smith Spark, The Court of Broken Knives

“Gods, this was wondrous! Everything, even the joyful slaughter in the palace of Sorlost, everything in his life was as nothing compared to this! Power. Such power flowing through him. They died at his asking. All of them. He'd kill them all. So futile, their little lives. The thin fine skin of life, suspended over the eternity of emptiness. They all deserved to die, surely? Death and death and death! The one true thing! The only true thing!”
― Anna Smith Spark, The Court of Broken Knives

“The shade climbed up the hills towards the top”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“All lives that remain unlived have to be lived at some point.
All unwritten stories need to be completed at some point. All
dreams that remain unfulfilled deserve to be fulfilled at some
point. All unpaid debts ought to be repaid at some point,
including the cosmic ones. More so when there are no future
generations to carry them forward.
Let it all end with me. All stories unsaid, all verses unwritten,
all dreams unfulfilled, all lives unlived.
Let all the noises die forever. Let all voids be filled
permanently. Let there be no smiles that remain hesitant
anymore”
― Rasal, I Killed the Golden Goose : A COLLECTION OF THOUGHTS, THOUGHTLESSNESS, SILENCES, POEMS & SOME ‘SHOT’ STORIES

“He turned off the canoreo and helped himself to the brandy stored behind a sliding panel, drinking from the bottle, because all three glasses were filthy. He felt surrounded by crashing great trees, and the monstrous beasts of unachieved, perhaps unachievable tasks. One such task was Ada whom he knew he would never give up; to her he would surrender the remnants of his self at the first trumpet blast of destiny. Another was his philosophic work, so oddly impeded by his own virtue—by that originality of literary style which constitutes the only real honesty of a writer. He had to do it his own way, but the cognac was frightful, and the history of thought bristled with clichés, and it was that history he had to surmount.”
― Nabokov Vladimir, Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle