Quotes About Literature

There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The only difference is that a piece of dynamite explodes once, whereas a book explodes a thousand times.

Reading Turgenev":

Adjectives are my guitly pleasure.

For years I have had the belief that all my questions will be answered by the books I'm reading. Books, however, only lead to other books.

The pleasantest of all diversions is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread out before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have never known.

I think my books give people a language to have a conversation about God that's not religious. There isn't enough new literature that brings the conversation of God into a modern context. I love the Bible, but in the West we've analyzed it until it fits into a structure of control. We need more new stories. We need different ways of looking at things, and I think it's coming.

A novel, basically, is writing one sentence — then, without violating the scope of the first one, writing the next sentence.

If literature truly possesses a mysterious power, I think perhaps it is precisely this: that one can read a book by a writer of a different time, a different country, a different race, a different language, and a different culture and there encounter a sensation that is one's very own.

Travolto dalle emozioni, ripensai agli anni delle elementari e delle medie, quando ci obbligavano a leggerlo: non era una lettura per bambini, ma adatta a un lettore maturo e sensibile, A volte, serve l'occasione giusta per incontrare veramente uno scrittore.

Chaque fois que je lis ces grandes œuvres, je me laisse entraîner par elles. Je m'accroche à elles comme un enfant craintif au vêtement de sa mère. Je me règle sur leur pas et j'avance tout doucement dans le fleuve du temps. C'est un voyage agréable où mille sensations se mêlent. Elles m'emmènent avec elles et me laissent rentrer seul, et de retour à la maison je me rends compte qu'elles sont pour toujours avec moi.

Si la littérature est réellement dotée d'une force mystérieuse, c'est bien celle-là: la possibilité pour un lecteur de retrouver ses propres impressions dans l'œuvre d'un écrivain d'une autre époque, d'un autre pays, d'un autre peuple, d'une autre langue et d'une autre culture.

Simplemente me resultaba doloroso que él pudiera tener interés en tales libros, que revelara su ignorancia, que yo llegara a odiar esa perfección de la que él estaba inconscientemente dotado. Me dolía, en resumen, imaginarme a este pescador aborreciendo su Jonia natal.

if some issue seems exceptionally important to you, make the effort to read the relevant scientific literature.

The second rule of thumb is that if some issue seems exceptionally important to you, make the effort to read the relevant scientific literature. And by scientific literature I mean peer-reviewed articles, books published by well-known academic publishers, and the writings of professors from reputable institutions.

This is why we can still find ourselves between the pages of the Bible, in the writings of Confucius or within the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides. These classics were created by humans just like us, hence we feel that they talk about us. In modern theatre productions, Oedipus, Hamlet and Othello may wear jeans and T-shirts and have Facebook accounts, but their emotional conflicts are the same as in the original play.

Anyone who has read a novel by Charles Dickens knows that the liberal regimes of nineteenth-century Europe gave priority to individual freedom even if it meant throwing insolvent poor families in prison and giving orphans little choice but to join schools for pickpockets. Anyone who has read a novel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn knows how Communism's egalitarian ideal produced brutal tyrannies that tried to control every aspect of daily life.

I sense you in the secret of all the paintings I love. I hear you stumbling at the stony core of the only books I read, the few I know how to read.

Books make dangerous devils out of women.

Every morning, after a few sips of coffee and a bit of small talk, each of us retreats with our books, and travels centuries away from this place.

I always say, I'm certain I changed 'Watchmen' less than the Coen brothers changed 'No Country for Old Men.' I'm certain of it. But you don't hear the Cormac McCarthy fans, like, up in arms about it. They should be. It's like an amazing Pulitzer Prize-winning book.

Nowadays I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.

I'm interested in everything. I don't see why Borges can't work along with Neil Gaiman, or Stephen King can't be mixed with Balzac. It's just storytelling, it's different ways of using codes and images and words and sounds.

A piece of literature can be many things but first of all it must capture its audience. You need to seduce people, entice them into a world of beauty and horror, light and shadow, of passion, of romance, of mystery. That's the magic of it. Beyond that, of course, you can open a dialogue about the ideas which interest you, but first of all you absolutely must get inside people's minds.

I would like to save all books, those that are banned, those that are burned, or forgotten with contempt by the mandarins who want to tell us what is good and what is bad. Every book has a soul ... and I believe every book is worth saving from either bigotry or oblivion.