Well there's just some universal truths in a way that I've just observed to be true. You read Voltaire. You read modern literature. Anywhere you go there's these observations about romantic love and what it does people and these rotten feelings that rarely are people meaning to do that to each other.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

I have quite a few different Bibles. Having rejected my parents' religion I still think the King James Bible is the most important work of literature in English. None of us can help being influenced by it.

Jesus claimed He had the power to raise himself from the dead and His followers would be raised from the dead. That's a unique claim in the literature of religion.

I think people's perception of a rich girl is literal but metaphorically I embrace it as being rich in love spirit joy and religion. So it's not about money.

We know too much and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion and so is our religion.

When we blindly adopt a religion a political system a literary dogma we become automatons. We cease to grow.

This is the most intimate relationship between literature and its readers: they treat the text as a part of themselves as a possession.

Among the letters my readers write me there is a certain category which is continuously growing and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.

The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.