Quotes About Literature

A library is an arsenal of liberty.

I took the speed reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It's about Russia.

I read poetry to save time.

I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books.

Biblioteca Ce bine c? toate aceste c?r?i Au fost scrise! Nu trebuie s? le mai scriu eu S-o iau de la cap?t, S?-mi fr?mânt mintea. M? uit la fiecare titlu – Vârându-mi nasul ?i, silabisind, ?i, cu fiecare tom, Parc? mi se ia o piatr? de pe inim?.

When I read a book, everything around me stopped existing. All the unhappiness in my family--my parents' bitter fights, my grandmother's sadness at having had everything taken away from her--disappeared. I merged with the characters.

When I was young, I did actually model and was much photographed by famous photographers. But I was always a bookworm.

La realidad es un manojo de poemas sobre los cuales nadie reclama derechos de autor. Debajo de cada piedra, de cada baldosa, se esconde un poema.

A mis traductores, que han tenido la paciencia y el arte de reconstruir el habla y los silencios de mis montevideanos en más de veinte lenguas. (La borra del café)

Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space...

In my case, literature is a kind of revenge. It's something that gives me what real life can't give me - all the adventures, all the suffering. All the experiences I can only live in the imagination, literature completes.

La literatura quizá hace a los seres humanos más aptos para la infelicidad, porque despierta unos apetitos y deseos que no pueden cumplirse, pero enriquece la sensibilidad de las personas y las da una comprensión mayor del mundo. Los hace…sentir mucho más aptos para la libertad.

The writer's job is to write with rigor, with commitment, to defend what they believe with all the talent they have. I think that's part of the moral obligation of a writer, which cannot be only purely artistic. I think a writer has some kind of responsibility at least to participate in the civic debate. I think literature is impoverished, if it becomes cut from the main agenda of people, of society, of life.

Reading good literature is an experience of pleasure...but it is also an experience of learning what and how we are, in our human integrity and our human imperfection, with our actions, our dreams, and our ghosts, alone and in relationships that link us to others, in our public image and in the secret recesses of our consciousness.

Markaz Dirasat al-Adab al-'Arabii wa-Dar al-Huda 2001; 16al-Suyuti, al-Rasa'il al-'ashar, Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al- 'Ilmiya, 1409 AH/1989 CE, p. 54; 'Ali ibn Taj al-Din al-Sinjari, al-karam fii akhbar Makka wa'l-bayt wa-wulat

The biggest double bed I'd ever seen. The

Chicken Soup for the Soul". You've heard of these books, am I right? We've all heard of them. But I wonder if you're aware of just how many "Chicken Soup" books exist on the planet. No offense, but I doubt it. I doubt it because in the time it would take you to come up with a number, the number would have become obsolete. Even as you read this, in some quiet, fecund place, another "Chicken Soup" book is being born.

But if we create our own Shakespeare, it is at least as true that the Shakespeare we create is a Shakespeare that has, to a certain extent, created us.

We always hit the bookstores & libraries in every city and small town, and I learned to tell a lot about a place by the kinds of books that were carried, or the attention given a library. The best I had ever seen was in NYC. The worst in Paoli, Indiana.

There was such a pile of them that Charles and his aides, when first they came into the chamber, expressed doubt that any single person could have written so much.)

In the book, he said, the self is fixed, made concrete; the book is the intersection of the soul and time.

The reason to read Blake and Dickinson and Freud and Dickens is not to become more cultivated or more articulate... The best reason to read them is to see if they may know you better than you know yourself. You may find your own suppressed and rejected thoughts flowing back to you with an "alienated majesty

People who have taught themselves how to live — what to be, what to do — from reading great works will not be overly susceptible to the culture industry's latest wares. They'll be able to sample them, or turn completely away—they'll have better things on their minds.

The English major reads because, as rich as the one life he has may be, one life is not enough. He reads not to see the world through the eyes of other people but effectively to become other people.