Quotes About Literature

She gave him books of poetry: Wordsworth, Whitman, all the W's. When she'd ask him how he liked them, he would say, Fine. I'm on page… and then he would tell her what page he was on and how many pages he'd accomplished that day.

Before he wrote about them, said Quilty, pretending to read the guidebook out loud, Hemingway shot his characters. It was considered an unusual but not unheard-of creative method. Still, even within literary circles, it is not that widely discussed.

Books are precious things, but more than that, they are the strong backbone of civilization. They are the thread upon which it all hangs, and they can save us when all else is lost.

Today you can buy the Dialogues of Plato for less than you would spend on a fifth of whiskey, or Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the price of a cheap shirt. You can buy a fair beginning of an education in any bookstore with a good stock of paperback books for less than you would spend on a week's supply of gasoline.

If you write a book set in the past about something that happened east of the Mississippi, it's a 'historical novel.' If you write about something that took place west of the Mississippi, it's a 'Western'- and somehow regarded as a lesser work. I write historical novels about the frontier.

I really learned how to write from Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, and de Maupassant.

Ours was a family in which everybody was constantly reading, and where literature, politics, history, and the events of the prize ring were discussed at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

My stories may seem to be the stories of men, but a check of my books will show that I have probably written the stories of more strong women than any other writer....[examples include] Miss Nesselrode of The Lonesome Gods , Ruth Macken of Bendigo Shafter , Echo Sackett of Ride the River , Em Talon of Ride the Dark Trail are some....[and] one of my favorites is Miss Jessica Trescott of Matagorda . (The Sackett Companion)

two well-worn volumes by George Borrow, Lavengro and Romany Rye. The two books are an account of Borrow's time among the Gypsies and what he learned there, and I was delighted.

I wished I had a book. It had been so long since I had read. Could a man forget how to read?

What few realize is that no writer is free to write exactly as he might wish. He is guided, to a great extent, by the tastes of readers and by the choices of editors. Of course, one can write whatever one wishes, but unless it conforms to the tastes of the public at the time, it will stay right on the author's shelf.

Candide by Voltaire

Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

Luckily, one of my teachers got me started on Plutarch and Montaigne.

As for sinning, most of the things he enjoyed were sins in the eyes of somebody. Except for reading…and most of his books were written by pagan authors.

next to the Bible more great men had read Plutarch than any other book.

It is often said that one has but one life to live, but that is nonsense. For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.

Even the book I'm reading to my class," said Miss Zarves. "The author makes fun of teachers!

Take some books and read; that's an immense help; and books are always good company if you have the right sort.

Keep good company, read good books, love good things and cultivate soul and body as faithfully as you can.

and best of all, the wilderness of books, in which she could wander, where she liked, made the library a region of bliss to her.

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain

and Jo laid the rustling sheets together with a careful hand, as one might shut the covers of a lovely romance, which holds the reader fast till the end comes, and he finds himself alone in the work-a-day world again.

books are always good company if you have the right sort. Let me pick out some for you.' And Mrs. Jo made a bee-line to the well-laden shelves, which were the joy of her heart and the comfort of her life.