Quotes About Literature

Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul - what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love?

Free people write books," it said. "Free people publish books. Free people sell books. Free people buy books. Free people read books. In the spirit of America's commitment to free expression we inform the public that this book will be available to readers at bookshops and libraries throughout the country.

Winner of the "Booker of Bookers," Midnight's Children is the novel that can be said to have done for Indian literature what One Hundred Years of Solitude did for the literature of the Americas, exciting a boom whose echoes have yet to fade.

when we read a book we like, or even love, we find ourselves in agreement with its portrait of human life. Yes, we say, this is how we are, this is what we do to one another, this is true. That, perhaps, is where literature can help most. We can make people agree, in this time of radical disagreement, on the truths of the great constant, which is human nature.

In the evenings they sat in pools of yellow light, books on their laps, lost in words. They looked like figures in a Rembrandt painting, Two Philosophers Deep in Meditation, and they were more valuable than any canvas; maybe members of the last generation of their kind, and we, we who are post-, who come after, will regret we did not learn more at their feet.

The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy. Because each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions need not be justified in the way that all others must, civilization is still being besieged by the armies of the preposterous. We are, even now, killing ourselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically absurd could be possible?

Surely, if we could create the world anew, the practice of organizing our lives around untestable propositions found in ancient literature—to say nothing of killing and dying for them—would be impossible to justify. What stops us from finding it impossible now?

We can't say, Listen, you barbarians: These holy books of yours are filled with murderous nonsense. In the interest of getting you to behave like civilized human beings, we're going to redact them and give you back something that reads like Kahlil Gibran. There you go ... Don't you feel better now that you no longer hate homosexuals?" However, that's really what one should be able to do in any intellectual tradition in the twenty-first century.

Reading. That was the sport I was good at.

Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book -I call that vicious!

The novel remains for me one of the few forms where we can record man's complexity and the strength and decency of his longings.

On the strength of his literary output alone... any woman of sense would decline to tackle D.H. Lawrence at 1,000 pounds a night.

Three Rules for Literary Success: 1. Read a lot. 2. Write a lot. 3. Read a lot more, write a lot more.

The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.

Why aren't more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books aren't within everybody's reach.

I gauge success in years, not weeks. The weekend box-office approach to book launches is short sighted and encourages crappy books.

The successful editor is one who is constantly finding newwriters, nurturing their talents, and publishing them with critical and financial success.

People are rushed and inspired by the success of Indian writers, and are falling over themselves to write novels. Every Indian is writing a novel right now. No one wants to revise.

I had my success too soon. Three books published with Scribners in New York before I was 30.

I could recite you the whole of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important." "You

Robin Buss is a writer and translator who contributes regularly to The Times Educational Supplement, The Times Literary Supplement and other papers.

Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shaksepeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important.

I found that with one hundred and fifty well- chosen books, a man possesses a complete summary of all human knowledge, or at least all that a man need really know.

One of his peculiarities was never to speak a word of French, which he however wrote with great facility.