Quotes About Literature

You are what you read. You write what you are.

No matter how much you write and do other things, make time to read.

A good novel is an intensely personal rendezvous between reader and writer.

A good novel appeals to emotions, not intellect. It makes you feel things deeply, and then you think about them.

Reading is the never-ending apprenticeship for writing ~ Mark Rubinstein

Life isn't simple. Literature shouldn't be either.

Literature is literature. Its purpose is to challenge and disorient us, to break us down a little bit so that we are forced to rebuild ourselves. Over time, over the course of many books, we construct a deeper, truer self.

Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments.

I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony.

I certainly can't speak for all cultures or all societies, but it's clear that in America, poetry serves a very marginal purpose. It's not part of the cultural mainstream.

The Giants on the Mountain by Luigi Pirandello.

"Classic": A book which people praise but don't read.

Editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for breakfast.

When a German dives into a sentence, you won't see him again until he emerges at the other end with the verb between his teeth.

"Classic." A book which people praise and don't read.

The difference between the almost-right word & the right word is really a large matter—it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.

Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.

When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or biography, I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for the reason that I have known him before—met him on the river.

I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

"Pilgrim's Progress," about a man that left his family it didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough.

I have had a "call" to literature, of a low order—i.e. humorous. It is nothing to be proud of, but it is my strongest suit… seriously scribbling to excite the laughter of God's creatures.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.