Quotes About Literature

The European and the North American consider that a book that has been awarded any kind of prize must be good; the Argentine allows for the possibility that the book might not be bad, despite the prize.

It is generally understood that a modern-day book may honorably be based upon an older one, especially since, as Dr. Johnson observed, no man likes owing anything to his contemporaries. The repeated but irrelevant points of congruence between Joyce's Ulysses and Homer's Odyssey continue to attract (though I shall never understand why) the dazzled admiration of critics.

The fact is that each writer creates his own precursors.

Before unearthing this letter, I had questioned myself about the ways in which a book can be infinite. I could think of nothing other than a cyclic volume, a circular one. A book whose last page was identical with the first, a book which had the possibility of continuing indefinitely.

Uno no es lo que es por lo que escribe, sino por lo que ha leído.

Mindig azt mondtam a tanítványaimnak, hogy ne csináljanak bibliográfiát, ne olvassanak kritikákat, olvassák magukat a m?veket; lehet, hogy keveset fognak belÅ'lük érteni, de élvezni fogják az olvasást, és mindig hallani fogják valakinek a hangját.

Words, displaced and mutilated words, words of others, were the poor pittance left him by the hours and the centuries.

So witless did these ideas strike me as being, so sweeping and pompous the way they were expressed, that I associated them immediately with literature.

The critics often invent authors; they select two dissimilar works - the Tao Te Ching and the 1001 Nights, say - attribute them to the same writer and then determine most scrupulously the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres...

The fact is that every author creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

Tres suertes puede correr un libro de versos: puede ser adjudicado al olvido, puedo no dejar una sola línea pero sí una imagen total del hombre que lo hizo, puede legar a las antologías unos pocos poemas...

Mi empresa no es difícil, esencialmente. Me bastaría ser inmortal para llevarla a cabo. Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote

There is nothing but quotations left for us. Our language is a system of quotations.

Cervantes' text and Menard's are verbally identical; but the second is almost infinitely richer.

Such a pity that he [GK Chesterton] became a Catholic.

Si un libro les aburre, déjenlo. No lo lean porque es famoso o porque es moderno o porque es antiguo. Si un libro es tedioso para ustedes, déjenlo, aunque ese libro sea el Quijote. Ese libro no ha sido escrito para ustedes. La lectura debe ser una de las formas de la felicidad y no se puede obligar a nadie a ser feliz.

In literary practices the idea of a single subject is also all-powerful. It is uncommon for books to be signed. The concept of plagiarism does not exist: it has been established that all works are the creation of one author, who is atemporal and anonymous. The critics often invent authors: they select two dissimilar works - the Tao Te Ching and the 1001 Nights, say - attribute them to the same writer and then determine most scrupulously the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres...

Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.

Little did they suspect that the years would end by wearing away the disharmony. Little did they suspect that La Mancha and Montiel and the knight's frail figure would be, for the future, no less poetic than Sinbad's haunts or Ariosto's vast geographies. For myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end.

The central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry.

There are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once.

I no longer believe in literary schools now; I believe in the individual.

There are those who cannot imagine a world without birds; there are those who cannot imagine a world without water; but in my case I am unable to imagine a world without books.

La lectura debe ser una de las formas de la felicidad y no se puede obligar a nadie a ser feliz.