Quotes About Literature

As in America and Europe, British bookshops withdrew the novel in the face of threats – two independent bookshops on the Charing Cross Road were bombed, as were Penguin bookshops and a department store.

I read the fuck out of every book I can get my hands on.

Is there a reason for a literate person to read century-old pulp fiction?

Boys, almost all boys, too fat or awkward or arrogant for sports, and not actually bright enough to achieve top marks, find their ways to the darkest corners and dustiest shelves, and there Lovecraft is waiting.

Good surveillence and good books don't mix.

Aud rhymes with shroud.

Contemporary literature, in each and every epoch, is the worst enemy of culture. A reader's limited time is wasted in reading a thousand books that blunt his critical sense and damage his literary sensibility. (I, 258)

To write for posterity* is not to worry whether they will read us tomorrow. It is to aspire to a certain quality of writing. Even when no one reads us. *Posterity is not the whole of future generations. It is a small group of men with taste, a proper upbringing, and erudition, in each generation.

El gran arte literario está en presentar con plenitud plástica lo inefable.

Appartengono alla letteratura tutti i libri che si possono leggere due volte.

Die moderne Literatur: dieses kolossale reaktionäre Unterfangen.

Modern literature: this colossal reactionary enterprise.

Optimisim is a fairly modern invention. — Classical literature lacks this vulgar sentiment.

Phrases are pebbles that the writer tosses into the reader's soul. The diameter of the concentric waves they displace depends on the dimensions of the pond.

tertulia inaceptable para la Academia Sueca, siendo que en las últimas décadas para ser galardonado en literatura no importa tanto que el premiado sea talentoso o un idiota, sino que lo gravitante es que sea de izquierda o que al menos sea funcional a ella.

At last comes Malherbe and, the first to do so in France, brings to his verse a smooth cadence.

Happy who in his verse can gently steerFrom grave to light, from pleasant to severe.

The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.

Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.

Stories are breadcrumbs "Just follow the trail of books and you will find me lost among galaxies of scorched stars and ships to Mars." -Garvey

MY BLACK ME My father fed me Invisible Man, Native Son, No Longer at Ease, Black Man's Burden, and the more I read, the madder I got, and I already had reason to scream, but my father kept me dreaming of what words I might bring to the world.

And in a very civil fashion did Manilov did so, even going as far as to address the man in the second person plural.

Intr-adevar, peste doua minute, nasul iesi. Era într-o uniforma cusuta în fir de aur, cu guler tare si înalt, cu pantaloni din piele de caprioara si cu sabie la sold. Dupa palaria cu pompon de pene, se putea vedea ca avea gradul de consilier de stat.

Despair at not reaching ideal perfection are among the reasons given. Again it is said.