Quotes About Literature

It's much more entertaining to live books than to write them.

commencement sans fin. Tant qu'il y aura des livres, personne, jamais, n'aura le dernier mot. Belle-Ile, le 23 juillet 1989.

plus cher et le plus inaccessible reste celui d'écrire ce qu'on appelle avec dédain un roman de gare, celui qu'on ouvre à Austerlitz et qu'on laisse sur la banquette à Angoulême, en ayant juste sauté quelques pages de description (ça

me voici dans l'île – pour ressentir le besoin d'une écriture plus vagabonde qui, à l'extrême, n'a d'autre objet qu'elle-même : ce qu'on nomme littérature.

Books knew more than you did, as a rule.

It's important to clarify that a library is not necessarily made up of books that we've read, or even that we will eventually read. They should be books that we can read. Or that we may read. Even if we never do.

I need to feel strongly, to love and to admire, just as desperately as I need to breathe. A letter from a friend, a Balthus painting on a postcard, a page of Saint-Simon, give meaning to the passing hours.

Sunday. I contemplate my books, piled up on the windowsill to constitute a small library: a rather useless one, for today no one will come to read them for me. Seneca, Zola, Chateaubriand, and Valery Larbaud are right there, three feet away, just out of reach. A very black fly settles on my nose. I waggle my head to unseat him. He digs in. Olympic wrestling is child's play compared to this. Sunday.

I believe in communication books communicate ideas and make bridges between people.

she was a book lover who enjoyed reading aloud to her baby. She liked the idea that, even before he understood them, he might begin with the most beautiful words, that he'd build language from a foundation of literature and poetry.

I only meant because sometimes the experience of reading can be corrupted by too many opinions.

Sometimes the experience of reading can be corrupted by too many opinions.

Amor en los tiempos del cólera, first in Spanish, then again in English. No one can take this from her. This book is hers alone.

There exists one book, which, to my taste, furnishes the happiest treatise of natural education. What then is this marvelous book? Is it Aristotle? Is it Pliny, is it Buffon? No—it is Robinson Crusoe.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

Surrealism, although the courses of literature paradoxically make room for it today, is not a discipline that can be taught.

Patricia: Do you know William Faulkner? Michel: No. Who's he? Have you slept with him?

C'est pour l'amour de la liberté qu'il devient « nègre » et se réduit en esclavage : pendant des années, son génie et son nom resteront invisibles dans les ténèbres de la sous-littérature

Literature was the first sector of German culture to be completely subjected to the 'new National Socialist values', and its policy towards books became, as Thomas Mann declared, the very symbol of the regime: for all Europe, the Third Reich would remain the country where books were burned.

You have a rare and marvelous gift with words.

So she was always in the middle of at least one book and felt safe only if she had several more on standby.

Cheap romance novels are never good books." "They are widely read, and I find their sheer predictable content calming. Hence, good.

Even though it inspires some of the world's greatest literature, music, and art, obsessive love is one of the most potent and compelling of tortures and one of the most difficult to overcome -- especially because it feels beyond conscious control. Tormented lovers try the patience even of those who truly love them, because they sufferers do not desire help extricating themselves though they claim to be seeking it; this is an illness from which no one wants to be cured.

One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.