“Scarcely anything in literature is worth a damn except what is written between the lines.”

“No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) American writer

“One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one's own bad lines.”

Peter Ackroyd book The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde

“Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

“When I read, it is not acted literature; but what I write is written acting.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

“I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

“Today's literature: prescriptions written by patients.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

“It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity.”

Richard Yates book Revolutionary Road

“That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel.”

Oliver Goldsmith book The Vicar of Wakefield

“Drawing the line,
The Boundary line
Between this form and that
Is what the mind does.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist