Quotes About Literature

Those who find ecstasy do so not by visiting the shrines of civilization but by trudging in the swamps of human destitution and misery. Our literature of ecstasy recounts the dark nights of the soul and encounters with mystics in the slums and in the refugee camps of genocidal wars.

A woman who loves books has a dreamer's soul, with each story she has read woven into her own.

On n'est pas le même selon qu'on a mangé du boudin ou du caviar; on n'est pas le même non plus selon qu'on vient de lire du Kant […] ou du Queneau.

Vous parlez beaucoup de Céline. - J'aime la littérature, monsieur. Ça vous étonne? - Vous ne l'expurgez pas, lui, je suppose? - Non. C'est lui qui ne cesse de m'expurger. - L'avez-vous rencontré? - Non, j'ai fait beaucoup mieux: je l'ai lu.

But humankind doesn't give a damn ! The proof of it is that in twenty-four years this novel has been collecting dust in libraries and no one, you hear me, no one has ever even talked to me about it. And that's perfectly normal because, as I told you, no one has read it.

Il détestait se sentir orphelin de livres, comme si aucun bouquin n'avait voulu de lui : il demeurait persuadé que c'était les ouvrages qui adoptaient leurs lecteurs et non le contraire.

I libri scritti per pura bontà sono rarissimi. Sono opere che si creano in abiezione e in solitudine, ben sapendo che dopo averle scagliate in faccia al mondo si sarà ancora più soli e più abietti. È normale, la principale caratteristica della gentilezza disinteressata è di essere irriconoscibile, inconoscibile, invisibile, insospettabile, perché un beneficio che dica il suo nome non è mai disinteressato.

Qu'est-ce que le texte, sinon un gigantesque cartilage verbal?

L'avez-vous rencontré ? - Non, j'ai fait beaucoup mieux : je l'ai lu.

Personne ne connaît mieux un individu que son assassin. [...] Les prix Nobel de la paix sont souvent des assassins, mais les prix Nobel de littérature sont toujours des assassins.

La lectura no es un placer sustitutivo.

Mi fa orrore la musica di sottofondo, innanzitutto perché non esiste cosa più volgare, e poi perché le melodie più belle possono entrare in testa con tale insistenza da trasformarsi in canzonette. Non esiste l'amore di sottofondo, la letteratura di sottofondo, il pensiero di sottofondo: esiste il rumore di fondo, che è una cosa orribile, un veleno.

Books are my weakness.

There's a wealth of literature out there which, hopefully, will be, you know, exploded in the future, and I personally find it very rewarding to be involved with classic storytelling, and sort of legendary characters.

Literature is an avenue to glory, ever open for those ingenious men who are deprived of honours or of wealth.

Like many works of literature, Hollywood chooses for its villains people who strive for social dominance through the pursuit of wealth, prestige, and power. But the ordinary business of capitalism is much more egalitarian: It's about finding meaning and enjoyment in work and production.

Considering the wealth of poetic drama that has come down to us from the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, it is surprising that so little of any value has been added since.

You're never going to read 'The Wealth of Nations,' and you shouldn't, really. It's 900 pages.

There is a wealth of readership for regional language literature in India that is not given importance. We must give respect to our own languages.

We write in a culture that favors the heft of the novel. Better still if the novel in question is large enough to be wielded interchangeably as a doorstop and a weapon.

At one of the first science fiction conventions I ever went to, I saw a guy wearing a sandwich board promoting his book. Count me out of that one.

Thomas Pynchon looks exactly like Thomas Pynchon should look. He is tall, he wears lumberjack shirts and blue jeans. He has Albert Einstein white hair and Bugs Bunny front teeth.

Fridays after school, especially when the weather was lousy, Mom would take me to the library. She'd let me check out whatever I wanted, and I checked out a lot.

My background isn't in social software; it's in online community, social networks, personal publishing, blogging, self-expression on the Web. I got on the Internet in the 1980s, and the magic moment for me arose from my being a literature geek, especially Dante and Shakespeare.