Quotes About Literature

I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days.

I like to imagine that, on the day after my last, my library and I will crumble together, so that even when I am no more I'll still be with my books.

My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices.

At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.

Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.

Our lumber pile, recruited entirely from the river, is thus not only a collection of personalities, but an anthology of human strivings in upriver farms and forests. The autobiography of an old board is a kind of literature not yet taught on campuses, but any riverbank farm is a library where he who hammers or saws may read at will. Come high water, there is always an accession of new books.

It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name.

Every man's memory is his private literature.

I am by nature a self-improver. I have read Gibbon, I have read Proust. I read the Old and New Testaments and most of Shakespeare. I studied French. I have meditated. I jogged. I learned to draw, using the right side of my brain.

Pero tengo miedo de confundir literatura y vida.

Tal vez si prohibieran la literatura como la cocaína, la gente por puro morbo, buscaría meterse un par de líneas.

Why call something a play that's based on a text?

Citeam toat? noaptea, toat? ziua, în loc s?-mi fac temele; la È™coal? citeam pe sub banc?[...]. M? simÈ›eam confortabil È™i sigur doar in spaÈ›iul imaginar al literarurii: f?r? un tat? absent, f?r? o mama deprimat?, f?r? b?t?uÈ™ii care m? puneau s? ling paginile c?rÈ›ii pân? când limba mi se înnegrea de la cerneal?.

La 16 ani investeam o gramad? de energie s?-mi afiÈ™ez plictiseala: îmi d?deam ochii peste cap, r?spundeam lapidar la întreb?rile p?rinÈ›ilor, r?mâneam impasibil la poveÈ™tile de via?? pe care le împ?rt??eau. Îmi construisem o armura de fier care îmi permitea s? evadez, s? citesc È™i s? m? întorc în propria-mi celul? f?r? ca nimeni s? observe.

For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.

Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory.

Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers -- such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a fa?ade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.

But usually, I watched Linda read. I couldn't believe she'd read so much in summer! Sometimes she laughed, reading her book, and one time she even cried. I didn't know how anyone could make such a big deal about books.

Shakespeare's great." Duh. Shakespeare's cool, man.

Having screwed around the last hour trying to decide whether to write in the style of Isaac Asimov (that version featured Caitlin as a Venusian chick with one eye and three breasts) or Dr. Seuss ("I am Nick/Nick is sick/Nick tells Debbie to…" well, you get the idea)

A novel, should it survive, protects what a missile can't.

My mother's most common childhood memory of me is standing next to me trying to be heard over the voice on the page. I didn't really commit to writing until I understood that it meant making that happen for someone else.