Top 1200 Literary Style Quotes & Sayings

Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in 'Black Mask' magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world.

The most important thing in life is style. That is, the style of ones existence-the characteristic mode of ones actions-is basically, ultimately what matters. For if man defines himself by doing, then style is doubly definitive, because style describes the doing.

A style does not go out of style as long as it adapts itself to its period. When there is an incompatibility between the style and a certain state of mind, it is never the style that triumphs.

The provincial intellectual is doomed to arguing at low level... there is still no Australian literary world, not in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide. It is some consolation to realise that there is no literary world in Birmingham or Los Angeles either. I have heard there is one in Montreal, but I don't believe it. The literary world is in London and New York, the only cities big enough to sustain magazines which can afford to reject copy.

I have always loved reading, so was interested in the literary world, and took many literary portraits.

Every genuinely literary style, from the high authorial voice to Foster Wallace and his footnotes-within-footnotes, requires the reader to see the world from somewhere in particular, or from many places. So every novelist's literary style is nothing less than an ethical strategy - it's always an attempt to get the reader to care about people who are not the same as he or she is.

The Booker thing was a catalyst for me in a bizarre way. It’s perceived as an accolade to be published as a ‘literary’ writer, but, actually, it’s pompous and it’s fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself. I’d always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s, as substitutes for experience.

Christopher Hitchens was a writer and an orator with a matchless style, commanding a vocabulary and a range of literary and historical allusion far wider than anybody I know.

I don't have a specific style. My style is unorthodox; that is my style. So you can't really place me here, place me there, because my style is just to be anywhere, you know what I'm saying?

But a writer's contribution is literary and a film is not literary. When you take that stuff off the page, and cast the people who are going to fit into those roles, that's what being a director is.

It remains a mystery to me why some of that [pulp] fiction should be judged inferior to the rafts and rafts of bad social [literary] fiction which continues to be treated by literary editors as if it were somehow superior, or at least worthier of our attention. The careerist literary imperialism of the Bloomsbury years did a lot to produce fiction's present unseemly polarities.

The Press nowadays is not a literary press; classic diction and brilliancy of style do not distinguish it by any means.

A design style is defined by a set of microdecisions. A clear style reflects a consistent set. A clear style may not be a good style; a muddled one never is.

Realism hasn't fallen out of favor with most people, who are interested in people's lives rather than gymnastics of style or literary trends. It's a certain kind of academic who undervalues realism, largely because it is not amenable to endless exegesis.

Style means no shield at all. Style means no front at all. Style means ultimate naturalness. Style means one man alone with billions of men about.

My style is raw; my style is '95. My style is what I live. My style is my story.

I think style is being so comfortable and confident in what you're wearing. That's what style is, 'cause everybody's got different style.

I've changed my style constantly, so I'm not sure I have one defined style, except perhaps style of subject matter.

For me, style is essentially doing things well. If you want to be outrageous, be outrageous with style. If you want to be restrained, be restrained with style. One can't specifically define style. It's like the perfume to a flower. It's a quality you can't analyze.

Style is just an impression. Style itself is hollow. Style, its ok style as long as it is part of a language. Style for style itself is just something very hollow.

To my mind, Death in Venice represents an enormous advance in Mann's literary development, not simply for the commonly appreciated reason that he crafted a superbly supple and elegant style, apparently well suited to the kind of prose Aschenbach is supposed to write.

My mom has given me my sense of style. She has taught me how individual style is so beautiful, what you appreciate on someone else might not be good for you. For her, style is all about being comfortable, and she has an innate sense of sophisticated style.

The New Testament evinces its universal design in its very, style, which alone distinguishes it from all the literary productions of earlier and later times.

I’m not club-able, you see. I don’t like literary parties and literary gatherings and literary identities. I’d hate to join anything, however loosely.

I changed my writing style deliberately. My first two novels were written in a very self-consciously literary way. After I embraced gay subject matter, which was then new, I didn't want to stand in its way. I wanted to make the style as transparent as possible so I could get on with it and tell the story, which was inherently interesting.

All literary style, especially national style, is made up of such coincidences, which are a spiritual sort of puns. That is why style is untranslatable.

Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in Black Mask magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world.

I have been robbed of three million dollars all told. Everyone today is playing my stuff and I don't even get credit. Kansas City style, Chicago style, New Orleans style hell, they're all Jelly Roll style.

Close friends, or those in my pay, sometimes call me a literary polymath, while others say that I'm just a shallow dilettante, superficial and breezy, with a faux-naif style.

Maybe many directors are trying to create their own style of filmmaking, or to respond to audiences that come expect a certain style from them. But I don't care about that - I don't intend to have a 'Miike' style. I just pour myself into each film, enjoy it, and then what comes out just seems to have a 'Miike' style.

I don't have traceable literary models because I haven't had great literary influences in my life.

There's literary creation and literary business. When I first got something accepted, it gave my life a validation it didn't otherwise have.

The science of style as an organ of thought, of style in relation to the ideas and feelings, might be called the organology of style.

All progress in literary style lies in the heroic resolve to cast aside accretions and exuberances, all the conventions of a past age that were once beautiful because alive and are now false because dead.

What a newspaper needs in its news, in its headlines, and on its editorial page is terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire, originality, good literary style, clever condensation, and accuracy, accuracy, accuracy!

The short story is not as restrictive as the sonnet, but, of all the literary forms, it is possibly the most single-minded. ...at the end there has to be the literary equivalent of the magician's puff of smoke, an outcome that is both startling and anticipated.

I should say that I'm not conscious of any particular style or any particular literary device when I am writing. I have written 22 books, and they are all very different. I have tried all kinds of genres.

A female writer does definitely get more attention if she writes about male characters. It's true. It's considered somehow more literary, in the same way that it's more literary to write about supposedly male subjects, such as war. You're considered more seriously by the literary establishment.

A writer must face up to the test of reality, including political reality, and that can't be done if he keeps his distance. A literary style cultivated like a hothouse plant may show a certain artificial purity, but it won't really be pure.

This is how I understand literature - as a kind of remix or echo chamber. What's going on in a literary work are other literary things disinterred, cannibalized, and recombined.

Kelvin Gastelum, there's many ways I can classify his style. I like it. He's improved. One thing I can say is that he's improved over his run in the UFC from 'The Ultimate Fighter' and now being a contender. But his style? It's very Mexican. You have the Mexican style of boxing, and he has a Mexican style of MMA, like smart Mexican style.

The literary culture, if you examine it, the high literary culture is that which preserves the government and you know it's really the talk for those who have.

What influenced my style was the feeling that I was a lousy artist... I was like the ugly duckling, not knowing what I was, style-wise, and thinking I was all on my own... I evolved into a style that couldn't be compared to anyone else.

I have no favourite genre or style but treat each novel with the same care, imagination and craftsmanship. It's as difficult to write a crime or a children's novel with a touch of style and grace as it is a literary novel.

To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.

Fine writing is a distinct disadvantage. So is unique literary style. They take attention from the subject

I don't believe, in the end, that there is any such thing as no style. Even a very neutral, plain style, one that doesn't use colloquialisms, lyrical flourishes, heavy supplies of metaphor, etc., is a style, and it becomes a writer's characteristic style just as much as a thicker, richer deployment of idiom and vocabulary.

If you can change style, why stick to one style? Style is a vanity because it gives you product identification.

I'd say in general, my style is Johnny Weir style. It's my style. I can't classify it as anything else.

I no more thought of style or literary excellence than the mother who rushes into the street and cries for help to save her children from a burning house, thinks of the teachings of the rhetorician or the elocutionist.

I've changed my style constantly, so I'm not sure I have one defined style, except perhaps style of subject matter. But you learn as you go, I suppose.

It's perceived as an accolade to be published as a 'literary' writer, but, actually, it's pompous and it's fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself.

I can't change overnight into a serious literary author. You can't compare apples to oranges. William Faulkner was a great literary genius. I am not.

What a newspaper needs in its news, in its headlines, and on its editorial page is terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire, originality, good literary style, clever condensation and accuracy, accuracy, accuracy.

Style has replaced elegance. Before, I believed that style is something a person embodied. But now it's so easy to buy good style if you have the money.

But everything written has style. The list of ingredients on the side of a cornflakes box has style. And everything literary has literary style. And style is integral to a work. How something is told correlates with - more - makes what's being told. A story is its style.

Your literary style reflects your personality.

I sat with myself one day and asked, 'Who is in those prestigious literary circles? Do they represent me? Do they appreciate the topics I write about and the style in which I write? Do those gatekeepers let a demographic like mine through the door?' And the answer was no.

The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers.

We should have scant notion of the gardens of these New England colonists in the seventeenth century were it not for a cheerful traveller named John Josselyn, a man of everyday tastes and much inquisitiveness, and the pleasing literary style which comes from directness, and an absence of self-consciousness.