Quotes About Literature

People need stories...we use stories to teach, to learn, to make sense of the world around us. As long as we need stories, we will need books.

I realized that a book can reach out and embrace you like an arm and make you walk away from you thought you understood.

Happiness was useless to me. It was heartache that filled my purse. What happy man has need of Shakespeare?

Reading became my sanctuary," Belle continued. "I found so much in those books. I found histories that inspired me. Poems that delighted me. Novels that challenged me…" Belle paused, suddenly self-conscious. She looked down at her hands, and in a wistful voice, said, "What I really found, though, was myself.

I grew up on a mixed diet of mass and class, and I still read that way. I hate it when people apologize for what they read. Some bestsellers aren't exactly literary. So what? They're fun and rip-roaring, Who instituted the book police and why do we have to answer them? Grrrrr!

Belle hesitated. "What is this place?" she asked. "A bit of magic, like all good books," the man replied. "An escape. A place where you can leave cares and worries behind." He smiled. "At least for a chapter or two.

Yet I had such joy from the words.

She might be a captive, but in this room, with a book in her hand, she could be free.

What happy man has need of Shakespeare?

All her life, she'd loved books. She loved the look of them, the smell of them, the sweet weight of them in her arms. Most of all, she loved the feeling she got every time she picked one up-the feeling of holding an entire world in her hands.

Belle hesitated. "What is this place?" she asked. "A bit of magic, like all goodbooks," the man replied. "An escape. A place where you can leave cares and worries behind." He smiled. "At least for a chapter or two." He offered her his arm.

Yes, I was good at reading people. I studied them so I could put them in my novels.

I managed to memorize half of "The Eve of St. Agnes," and would mutter stanzas to myself when I was bored, alone, or at aerobics class.

She loved to read and did so quite uncritically, taking each book as a prescription of sorts, an argument for a certain kind of life.

She was not unique, but neither was she alone. Reading might have saved her.

I could always give you a teaser. You bookish people love teasers, don't you?

had what could probably have been classified as a book addiction.

Sometimes," he said, "when I'm in a social pickle, I like to ask myself, WWJAD?" I raised an eyebrow, and he explained. "What Would Jane Austen Do?

Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Jack Miles's wonderful literary reading of the Hebrew Bible as a biography of God offers the insight that after the Book of Job, God never speaks again. God may seem to silence Job, but Job silences God. It is lovely that Job silencing God is part of the text (though likely an accidental order of the books), because it reflects a real change in the real world after the Book of Job came into it.

I skim through our notebook, thick with words, and then through our Facebook messages—so many now—and then I write a new one, quoting Virginia Woolf: "Let us wander whirling to the gilt chairs.… Are we not acceptable, moon? Are we not lovely sitting together here Ã¢â'¬Â¦?

Instead, I pull out my wallet and hand Mrs. Carnes a twenty, which is the smallest I have, and she counts off the books.

I won't read a book that starts with a description of the weather. I don't read books over 300 pages, though I'll make an exception for Don Delillo.

Roy might know who James Joyce is, I'm not sure, but it wouldn't matter. You mention books to Roy and he thinks you're trying to act superior.