Quotes About Literature

The essence of literature is to escape any essential determination, or any affirmation which stabilises or even realises it: it is never already there; it is always to be found or to be reinvented.

Escribir será, en el libro, volverse legible para todos y, para sí mismo, indescifrable?

Mis kõige enam lugemist ohustab, on see: lugeja reaalsus, tema isiksus, pretensioonikus ja põikpäisus loetu ees aina iseendaks jääda - inimeseks, kes üldiselt teab, kuidas lugeda. Lugeda luuletust ei tähenda lugeda lihtsalt järjekordset luuletust, see ei tähenda isegi sisenemist luule olemusse selle luuletuse kaudu. Luuletuse lugemine on see luuletus ise, mis ennast lugemises kinnitab.

From now on the tasks of literature and philosophy can no longer be separated. When one is concerned with giving voice to the experience of the world and showing how consciousness escapes into the world, one can no longer credit oneself with attaining a perfect transparence of expression. Philosophical expression assumes the same ambiguities as literary expression, if the world is such that it cannot be expressed except in "stories" and, as it were, pointed at.

And, hey. You. Thanks for being the kind of person who likes to pick up a book. That's a genuinely great thing. I met a librarian recently who said she doesn't read because books are her job and when she goes home, she just wants to switch off. I think we can agree that that's as creepy as hell. Thank you for seeking out stories, the kind that take place in your brain.

I utilise all my spare moments. I've read twenty-seven of the Hundred Best Books. I collect ferns.

From this magnificent piece of inspired literature, we conclude that confessing our sin is a vital part of vibrant, victorious Christian living.

Cubism is ... a picture for its own sake. Literary Cubism does the same thing in literature, using reality merely as a means and not as an end.

Parfümierte, wortreiche, handlungsarme Ideenromane, die deshalb von den Deutschen geliebt werden, weil dieser Mann [Thomas Mann] genauso ein Heuchler war wie sie selbst.

This is the most important thing about me--I'm a card-carrying reader. All I really want to do is sit and read or lie down and read or eat and read or shit and read. I'm a trained reader. I want a job where I get paid for reading books. And I don't have to make reports on what I read or to apply what I read.

It must be that people who read go on more macrocosmic and microcosmic trips – biblical god trips, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake trips. Non-readers, what do they get? (They get the munchies.)

There was something nice about a man who was absorbed by a good book.

Reading is more of a left-brain process, and listening to music is a right-brain function.

Zašto se smatra da su knjige pametne ako su gorke?

We're talking about the novel, right? But maybe we're not. We're talking about ourselves. And I guess that's what can start to happen when you talk about a book.

It was sort of like the way writers had long been pillaging all the good phrases from Shakespeare plays for the titles of their novels, so the only phrases still available meant nothing. Soon, Emmett thought, people would be writing novels called Enter, Guard .

But it's never just been the journals that have made the difference, I don't think. It's also the way the students are with one another . . . the way they talk about books and authors and themselves. Not just their problems, but their passions too. The way they form a little society and discuss whatever matters to them. Books light the fire—whether it's a book that's already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in.

Books were an antidepressant, a powerful SSRI.

But you can't say that what you learn in English class doesn't matter. That great writing doesn't make a difference. I'm

Cuvintele conteaz?. Asta a spus doamna Quenell de la bun început. Cuvintele conteaz?. Întreg semestrul am c?utat cuvintele cu care s? spunem ceea ce trebuia s? spunem. Ne c?ut?m propria noastr? voce.

There's only a handful of women who get anywhere. Short story writers, mostly, as if maybe women are somehow more acceptable in miniature.

It was as though there were a box I kept under a bed and pulled out only once in a while, and in this box were crammed Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman and Carson McCullers and now Lee the journalist. If I opened the lid, their heads would pop out like jack-in-the-box clowns on springs, mocking me, reminding me that they existed, that women could occasionally become important writers with formidable careers, and that maybe I could have done it if I'd tried.

Male novelists made up words in their fiction: "phallomaterialism"; "ero-tectonics.

Was that true? Could a woman writer simply appear in the world, unconcerned about her stature, or whether she'd be laughed at or ignored?