Quotes About Literature

I opened my trunk and almost burst into tears. At such times I always sought refuge in a bookstore.

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.

The difference between journalism and literature is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.

Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

Ist die Literatur vielleicht ein Bär, der seine Pfote leckt, ein bleierner Schlaf nach getaner Pflicht, auf dem Diwan des Arbeitszimmers?

ABELARDO I: [...] Foi a bala do cano que penetrou profundamente, a primeira... As outras rodearam o coração! Que dor... Decerto é porque o coração ficou intacto... O coração, esse útero do homem, onde a gente gera os filhos mais caros... a ambição, o desespero, a vontade de viver... a literatura...

Man was, and is, too shallow and cowardly to endure the fact of the mortality of everything living. He wraps it up in the rose-coloured optimism of Progress (which no one actually believes in), he masks it with literature, he crawls behind the shelter of ideals so as not to see anything. But

Jeder Grieche hat einen Zug von Don Quijotte, jeder Römer einen von Sancho Pansa - was sie sonst noch waren, tritt dahinter zurück.

Wer für Kinder schreibt, übt den Beruf des Schriftstellers unter erschwerten Bedingungen aus, und dies freiwillig ... Wer für Erwachsene schreibt, schreibt ausschließlich für Erwachsene. Wer für Kinder schreibt, schreibt automatisch für Erwachsene mit." [As quoted on Preußler's official website .]

Das Fräulein Scuderi? Bei meiner Seele! In diesem Wort weht 'was von ihrem Atem. Und kommt's von ihr, dann hat dies kleine Lied Eine Geschichte, die mich intressiert.

She (Patricia Higsmith) was a mean, cruel, hard, unlovable, unloving human being…I could never penetrate how any human being could be that relentlessly ugly…. But her books? Brilliant.

Do you know why I have so patiently translated Poe? Because he resembled me. The first time I opened one of his books, I saw with terror and rapture subjects dreamed by me and described by him, twenty years earlier. CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

Ouida's first novel was published in three volumes in 1863, though it had previously been released in serial form as Granville de Vigne in The New Monthly magazine from January 1861 to June 1863, as was the common practice at the time. The author was only twenty-four years old at the time, but was later to claim that this was not her first attempt at writing and that her 1867 novel Idalia was written when she was just sixteen.

she was very liberal in her range of literature. All languages being equally intelligible to us (though we can never comprehend why you have not all one and the same, as we superior animals have), I derived considerable entertainment from hearing the innumerable works, in various tongues, which her companion read aloud to her almost from morning to night.

Whatever I tried to write was verse.

library terror - that feeling of being hopelessly overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of available books...

At the court hearing, Howard Weitzman told the judge that if they were gonna ban 'Suicide Solution' and hold me responsible for some poor kid shooting himself, then they'd have to ban Shakespeare, 'cos Romeo and Juliet's about suicide, too.

History belongs to the victors, legends to the people, fantasy to literature. Only death is certain.