Critical Lens Quote Interpretation Practice

TASK: Write introduction paragraph for each of the critical lens quotes below. Do not forget to INTERPRET QUOTE (respecting the integrity and complexity of each), AGREE OR DISAGREE, and APPLY TWO WORKS that prove your thesis.

DUE TUESDAY JANUARY 8: 1-9

DUE WEDNESDAY JANUARY 9: 9-18

1.   "In literature, evil often triumphs but never conquers."

2.   "Good literature substitutes for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through."

3.   "When writers write from a place of insight and real caring about the truth, they have the ability to throw the lights on for the reader."

Anne Lamott (adapted)

4.   "A story must be exceptional enough to justify its telling; it must have something more unusual to relate than the ordinary experience of every average man and woman."

Thomas Hardy

5.   "It is not what an author says, but what he or she whispers , that is important."

Logan Pearsall Smith (adapted)

6.   "It is the responsibility of the writer to expose our many grievous faults and failures and to hold up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams, for the purpose of improvement."

John Steinbeck (adapted)

7.   "What lasts is what is written.   We look to literature to find the essence of an age."

Peter Brodie (adapted)

8.   "All conflict in literature is, in its simplest form, a struggle between good and evil."

9.   "Good people...are good because they've come to wisdom through failure."

William Saroyan

10.   "All literature shows us the power of emotion.   It is emotion, not reason, that motivates characters in literature."

Paraphrased from an interview with Duff Brennan

11.   "All literature is protest.   You can't name a single literary work that isn't protest."  

Richard Wright (adapted)

12.   "The bravest of individuals is the one who obeys his or her conscience."

J.F. Clarke (adapted)

13.   "We do not read novels for improvement or instruction."

Oliver Wendell Holmes

14.   "In a dark time, the eye begins to see..."

Theodore Roethke

15.   "A person is a person through other persons..."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

16.   "Things can happen in some cities and the tale of them will be interesting:   the same story laid in another city would be ridiculous."

Frank Norris

17.   "If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it?   A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us."

Frank Kafka

18.   "The right good book* is always a book* of travel; it is about a life's journey."