A Quote by Joseph Brodsky

Literature invents its own rules.

Joseph Brodsky

Quote Topics

Literature Own Rules

Quote Author

Joseph Brodsky
American - Poet
May 24, 1940 - January 28, 1996

The world of fiction is a sovereign world that comes to life in the author's head and follows the rules of art, of literature. And that is the major difference that is reflected in the form of the work, in its language and its plot. An author invents every aspect of a fiction, every detail.

Imre Kertesz

Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.

Lord Acton

I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.

Kurt Vonnegut

Literature cannot develop between the categories "permitted"—"not permitted"—"this you can and that you can't." Literature that is not the air of its contemporary society, that dares not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers, such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as waste paper instead of being read. -Letter to the Fourth National Congress of Soviet Writers

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are...so make up your own rules.

Neil Gaiman

The people who succeed are those who are aware of the rules; they respect the rules. But they make up their own rules. They create for creative sake.

Donna Lynne Champlin

Fiction does not invent out of a vacuum, but it invents; and what it invents is, first, the fabric and cadence of language, and then a slant of idea that sails out of these as a fin lifts from the sea.

Cynthia Ozick

When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own.

Gary Snyder

When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written.

George Saintsbury

It seems to me that literature is giving way a little bit to the immediacy of other diversions, other forms of entertainment. What will it be in fifty years? I don't know. Will there be printed books? Probably, but I'm not sure. There's always going to be literature, though. I believe that. I think literature has a way of getting deep into people and being essential. Literature has its own powers.

James Salter

The truly original artist invents his own signs.

Henri Matisse

The consumer game is tougher than pro football and more conniving than chess. One side [industry] invents the rules and the other side [consumers] is left to guess what they are.

Betty Furness

Those who live as though God sets the rules are not going by their own rules. That is the self-sacrifice, or selflessness, that peace more often than not requires. Those who insist on going by their own rules cannot make that sacrifice. They are the steady adherents of (global) conflict because they are forever fighting both themselves and others to do whatever they think that they want to do.