Thomas De Quincey Quotes

The novelist now usurps the chair of the educator, the pulpit of the preacher, the columns of the journalist. Yet his original purpose of entertaining may have been his highest purpose. (introduction to Gladiator, Book League Monthly, 1930)

All that is literature seeks to communicate power

Art can be very political but that can't be the purpose of art, it can't be the driving force. It isn't with any of the books that I love, anyway.

I think novelists, when they write their books, end up having occasionally serving a purpose and playing roles that they never really fully either intended or even understood.

To be honest, I think, for me, the power is always with art. The art world clearly couldn't happen without art.

If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.

You don't paint pictures to put them in your attic. You want people to look at them.

I don't think I'm making any great statements, and I certainly don't think I'm making art.

Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance, like a signpost or a warning notice.

It is the glory and good of Art, That Art remains the one way possible Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine at least.

Politics is marginal, but literature moves along by indirection.

It is human nature to want to exchange ideas, and I believe that, at bottom, every artist wants no more than to tell the world what he has to say.

It is the life in literature that acts upon life.

I was thinking, "So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now.

The final test of a work of art is not whether it has beauty, but whether it has power.

I think the pleasure of form is that you have a companion with you besides all the poetry you have ever read.

I believe that art has incredible power.

It's hard to make music knowing that it's not going to be received by the listener in the way that it should be.

Poetry has been the longest pleasure of my life.

Keep in mind that books, like art museums, are not always geared to the desires of the reader.

Books are an attempt to control something that's uncontrollable.

Can one make works which are not works of 'art'?

The hand of bone and sinew and flesh achieves its immortality in taking up a pen. The hand on a page wields a greater power than the fleshly hand ever could in life.

Art is never the voice of a country, it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the art that speaks it most unmistakably, most directly, most variously, most fully, is fiction.

A movie is just like a work of art or a book or a piece of music. The intent of its maker is one thing, but its interpretation by an audience is something else. I don't stop at what the filmmaker wanted to do.