Quotes About Literature

Before the fifteenth century was out, William Caxton had printed two editions of The Canterbury Tales and they have never been out of print since. They have been enjoyed, imitated, copied, re-translated, put on stage, screen and radio, and generations have rightly regarded Chaucer as the father and founding genius of English literature.

Shakespeare shoved into bed together words that scarcely knew each other before, had never even been introduced.

It is impossible to get enough books, don't you find? But where are we without them? Just words on the wind... Not words on the mind.

Tota novel·la és convencional. La gràcia consisteix a fer que no ho sembli.

My books are my brain and my heart made visible.

the rationale for the existence of literature lies precisely in its ability to work on issues that concern us deeply. And it does so in a way that keeps our motivation at its highest intensity. Literature is fuel for 'hot cognition.' One may presume that imaginative literature is a property that all human cultures possess and as such may provide humans with an evolutionary advantage.

Semblen dibuixos, però a dins de les lletres hi ha les veus. Cada pàgina és una capsa infinita de veus" (Trilogia de Moçambic)

I just used a very simple way to explain what are deep ideas, and why can't that be literature?

El libro es pues la morada "natural" de los exiliados, su consuelo. Y, más allá de eso, una oportunidad de transformar el exilio en ventaja, de darle valor creativo.

I write the books I want to write. I'm delighted if they sell well and I'm not expecting my publishers to just keep giving me money, but there's no way I want to bow to commercial pleasure. I mean, there's plenty of people publishing very good commercial stuff. If my stuff is commercial that's great, but it's not why I write.

I was brought up in a tradition of reading and thinking at university that, in a sense, left the body out. It was all about your mind. That good writing didn't have a "self" in it, didn't have an ego in it. Oh my God, I had so much to unlearn when I became a writer!

Of all the Grail romances the most famous, and the most artistically significant, is Parzival, composed sometime between 1195 and 1216.

For the novelist, knowledge is not subdivided into rigidly demarcated compartments, and there are no taboos, no 'disreputable' subjects.

The library spilled onto the floor and into the other rooms. Some books held up wobbly tables, others were literally swept under the rug. Sabrina had once found a book inside the toilet tank.

Ive read an awful lot of books, Ive read alot of awful books

In fact, when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil, you will have to pry a book out of my cold, dead hands.

Moby Dick - that book is so amazing. I just realized that it starts with two characters meeting in bed that's how my book begins, too, but I hadn't noticed the parallel before, two characters forced to share a bed, reluctantly.

Poor little librarians of the world, those girls, secretly lovely, their looks marred forever by the cruelty of a pair of big dark eyeglasses!

All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.

On a summer night it can be lovely to sit around outside with friends after dinner and, yes, read poetry to each other. Keats and Yeats will never let you down, but it's differently exciting to read the work of poets who are still walking around out there.

She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.

T]he reason why Shakespeare and Pushkin were great writers was because from the time when they were boys they stood like policemen over their thoughts and didn't allow one small insincerity to creep in.

T.S. Eliot once wrote, "Immature poets borrow. Mature poets steal.

I am quite happy for people to disagree with me on a book. If I say it is a 5 star read and you don't, you just failed to read it right. ;-)