Quotes About Literature

I feel like a little kid in a toy shop. All those books. I've always wanted to be a writer, but before I met Ms. Finney, Barbara, I was afraid to tell anyone. I think it's some kind of miracle that all we have to work with is the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. And they turn into words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books, conversations, plays. It's just incredible to me.

How pleasant to read uncompromised by purpose.

Literature is the province of imagination, and stories, in whatever guise, are meditations on life.

She can't understand that books don't get used up. I've tried to explain that they aren't like clothes or furniture-that we keep them because we might want to read them again. And because they remind us of how we felt when we read them.

What do you mean to do?' 'Make literary history, I guess.

The sensitive readers, they have a certain look. You can al. most smell it on them, that they need books to feel okay.

Finnegans Wake, several

There is real hope for a culture that makes it as easy to buy a book as it does a pack of cigarettes."--a civic leader quoted in a New American Library ad (1951) American Pulp tells the story of the midcentury golden age of pulp paperbacks and how they brought modernism to Main Street, democratized literature and ideas, spurred social mobility, and helped readers fashion new identities.

Oddly, Angela took to school like a bird to flight. She completed her homework almost before the teacher finished assigning it and read twice as many books as required. She had an understanding of history as if she'd lived it. Most surprising, she could stand in front of the classroom and read with the passion and clarity of a little southern Shakespearean thespian.

The fashion has been in literary fiction for the depressing ending, and for more or less passive characters who have terrible things happen to them . . . So why not have a happy ending? Is there a law?

He turned the page. He said, This is writing. This is printing. This tells us of all the things we ought to know in the world.

Tatiana had always thought she would not make a very good Communist. She liked Mikhail Zoshchenko's stories too much.

Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.

I am always glad when any of my books can be put into an inexpensive edition, because I like to think that any people who might wish to read them can do so. Surely books ought to be within reach of everybody.

Me gustan los escritores que hablan sobre el hecho de escribir y citan continuamente frases de otros autores

Si uno diluye un buen poema en un litro de agua consigue un cuento regular. Si uno diluye ese cuento en diez litros de agua, consigue una novela innecesaria.

Magdalena... ¡esa escala en una almena...!

A great speech is literature.

It seems to me that anyone whose library consists of a Kindle lying on a table is some sort of bloodless nerd.

She read to find out what it was like to be French or Russian in the nineteenth century, to be a rich New Yorker then, or a Midwestern pioneer. She read to discover how not to be Charlotte, how to escape the prison of her own mind, how to expand, and experience.

A book isn't rigorous if students aren't reading it.

What are you reading, Nanny?' 'Pride and Prejudice. Such a stupid book. I've read it twice. Can't see why anyone bothers with it.

There was always a woman with TB in Remarque's books. Frankly I was a little fed up with it.

Ted looked at Everett's face. "Percival Everett. Didn't you write a book called Erasure ?" Everett nodded. "I didn't like it," Ted said. "Nor I," Everett said. "I didn't like writing it, and I didn't like it when I was done with it." "Well, actually, I loved the novel in the novel. I thought that story was real gripping. You know, true to life." "I've heard that.