Quotes About Literature

Ah! there is a man who justifies the wit who insisted that one ought never to know an author except through his books.

What is utterly detestable is the Victor Hugo of the last stage, the Légende des Siècles, I forget all their names. But in the Feuilles d'Automne, the Chants du Crépuscule, there's a great deal that's the work of a poet, a true poet! Even in the Contemplations,

Bizim için büyülü anahtarlar? olan içimizdeki derin, nüfuz edemeyece?imiz yerlerin kap?lar?n? açan yol gösterici oldu?u sürece, okuman?n ya?am?m?zdaki rolü sa??lt?c?d?r.

Aunque se desborde, la literatura es siempre un orden.

i tuoi romanzi ... sono sempre rimasti in camera da letto, umilmente, accanto a te; li prendevi in prestito oppure, quando li compravi, li regalavi subito, desiderosa com'eri di passare ad altri il piacere di quelle letture. ... (pagina 78)

Il piacere della lettura rischiai di perderlo per eccesso di analisi, in fin dei conti è questo che nelle università si fa con i libri: li si analizza. Quindi abbandonai i corsi e approfittai degli appunti e della magnifica biblioteca per dedicarmi, anima e corpo, coricata sull'unico divano di casa nostra, alla lettura, Il Cile stava crollando mentre io flirtavo con il bel Mr. Darcy o spalancavo le porte alla dimora di Brideshead.

and [thanks] to Ludmila Parks for explaining to me that the world is divided into two kinds of people: those who have read the Brothers Karamazov and those who have not.

Está pretendiendo que todo se repita en una historia imaginada no por usted sino por Bioy Casares.

Ma ancora una volta si ripete che l'unico passato reale è quello che perdura nella memoria e che l'unica perdurabile memoria è la scrittura. [...] Forse la letteratura, forse la mia letteratura, rettifica, non svolge altra missione che quella di perfezionare il passato affinché l'avvenire si riprometta di non essere da meno (196).

Orwell's vision of our terrible future was that world-- the world in which books are banned or burned. Yet it is not the most terrifying world I can think of. I think instead of Huxley-- ...I think of his Brave New World. His vision was the more terrible, especially because now it appears to be rapidly coming true, whereas the world of 1984 did not. What's Huxley's horrific vision? It is a world where there is no need for books to be banned, because no one can be bothered to read one.

Orwell's vision of our terrible future was that world - the world in which books are banned or burned. Yet it is not the most terrifying world I can think of. I think instead of Huxley [...] I think of his Brave New World. His vision was the more terrible, especially now because it appears to be rapidly coming true, whereas the world of 1984 did not. What is Huxley's horrific vision? It is a world where there is no need for books to be banned, because no one can be bothered to read one.

So we spent our undergraduate years awash in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse and Middle English, living with Beowulf and Sir Gawain, ... and we were required to pay hardly any attention to the 19th-century novel, and not much to the 18th. As for the 20th century, it might have never arrived. As a friend of mine said, 'They taught us to believe in dragons.

Orwell's vision of our terrible future [...] - the world in which books are banned. What is Huxley's horrific vision? It is a world where there is no need for books to be banned, because no one can be bothered to read them'.

A home without books is a body without soul.

There were poets before Homer.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.

A word after a word after a word is power.

For centuries censorship has created best sellers because, as Michel de Montaigne said, 'To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.' (Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature)

Dennis hit him with the [Sheri] Tepper. It was a hardback book, six hundred pages of wonder and adventure and a little preachiness mixed in.

we may indeed assume, with a high degree of probability, that Jane Austen went commando.

she too lives in and for words, for the words of others. Other men's flowers. 'These are other men's flowers, only the string that binds them is my own.

After a year or two of keeping my head down and trying to pass myself off as a normal person, I made contact with the five other people at my university who were interested in writing; and through them, and some of my teachers, I discovered that there was a whole subterranean Wonderland of Canadian writing that was going on just out of general earshot and sight.