Quotes About Literature

Read history, works of truth, not novels and romances

Homer was thus at once contemporary in content and antique in form." - Bernard Knox

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

I regard the Bible, especially the Old Testament, the same as I do most other ancient books, in which there is some truth, a great deal of error, considerable barbarism and a most plentiful lack of good sense.

No one pretends that Shakespeare was (divinely) inspired, and yet all the writers of the books of the Old Testament put together, could not have produced Hamlet.

the Bible is a book written by ignorance—at the instigation of fear.

The whole world's writing novels, but nobody's reading them.

We need readers," muttered Daniel Chard. "More readers. Fewer writers.

Fancourt can't write women,' said Nina dismissively. 'He tries but he can't do it. His women are all temper, tits and tampons.

Hard to remember these days that there was a time you had to wait for the ink and paper reviews to see your work excoriated. With the invention of the internet, any subliterate cretin can be Michiko Kakutani.

I said that the greatest female writers, with almost no exceptions, have been childless. A fact. And I have said that women generally, by virtue of their desire to mother, are incapable of the necessarily single-minded focus anyone must bring to the creation of literature, true literature. I don't retract a word. That is a fact.

The whole world's writing novels, but nobody's reading them. We need readers. More readers. Fewer writers.

She lived alone and talked books not babies;

Erudite, for a woman who confuses "you're" and "your" and goes in for random capitalisation.' 'We can't all be literary geniuses,' said Robin reproachfully. 'Thank Christ for that, from all I'm hearing about them.

but we don't know whether the killer writes." "Oh, nearly everyone does these days," said Fancourt. "The whole world's writing novels, but nobody's reading them.

So I've been forced to the conclusion," said Strike, "that the Bombyx Mori everyone's read is a different book to the Bombyx Mori Owen Quine wrote.

Na ja, bei ihm heißt Chard 'Phallus Impudicus', und ..." [...] "Er heißt 'unzüchtiger Pimmel'?

in literature. Neither of them minded women

Hard to remember these days that there was a time when you had to wait for the ink and paper reviews to see your work excoriated. With the invention of the internet, any subliterate cretin can be Michiko Kakutani.

Learning became her. She loved the smell of the book from the shelves, the type on the pages, the sense that the world was an infinite but knowable place. Every fact she learned seemed to open another question, and for every question there was another book.

For every question, there is a book.

I have fixed more sentences than most people have read in their lives.

Ho un amico che non ama Dickens. Non so se compatirlo o picchiarlo.

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.