Quotes About Literature

The Incas were right to worship the sun, Father. God is fire. Combustion is the one inarguable blessing. A tree, oil, coal, a man, a civilization, a soul. They've all got to burn sometime. The warmth made by their passing may be the salvation of others. The ultimate value of the Bible, the Constitution, or any work of literature, really, is that they all burn very well, and for a while they keep back the cold.

It would be a librarian.

The Incas were right to worship the sun, Father," the Fireman said to Father Storey. "God is fire. Combustion is the one inarguable blessing. A tree, oil, coal, a man, a civilization, a soul. They've all got to burn sometime. The warmth made by their passing may be the salvation of others. The ultimate value of the Bible, or the Constitution, or any work of literature, really, is that they all burn very well, and for a while they keep back the cold.

Did he finish reading The Hunger Games before his heart gave out? I hoped so. For me, a lifelong bookworm, there was nothing quite so awful as the thought of dying fifty pages from the end of a good novel.

every fictional world was a work of fantasy, and whenever writers introduce a threat or a conflict into their story, they create the possibility of horror. He had been drawn to horror fiction, he said, because it took the most basic elements of literature and pushed them to their extremes. All fiction was make-believe, which made fantasy more valid (and honest) than realism. He

a place to throw down a blanket and read a book.

You found yourself a librarian! I can help with the figuring-out thing and point you toward some good poetry while I'm at it. It's what I do.

Though I could agree with him that Miss Gamache had a good heart, I couldn't read her book without wanting to plunge an ice pick into it while screaming, 'That's for chapter four!

Writers are essential. Readers are essential. Publishers are not.

Reading is the way mankind delays the inevitable. Reading is the way we shake our fist at the sky. As long as we have these epic, improbable reading projects arrayed before us, we cannot breathe our last: Tell the Angel of Death to come back later; I haven't quite finished Villette.

I have never squandered an opportunity to read.

The problem with the English Patient is that to enjoy it, you have to be either English or patient.

Book lovers are engaged with writers in a private communion that occurs in some vaporous cenacle of the mind.

Unless paid, I never read books by or about businessmen or politicians, nor should anyone else.

A reading life... is an adventure without maps where you meet unexpected soulmates along the way.

There's nothing to match curling up with a good book when there's a repair job to be done around the house.

Did you just say you Think Mansfield Park is boring? Get out of my house.

The home library of an A was more likely to have at least 500 books.

The more I learn, the clearer it becomes to me that blaming fatness for sickness is a view unsupported by scientific literature.

The more novels you read, the better you were at reading other people's emotions. It was a huge effect. This wasn't just a sign that you were better educated—because reading nonfiction books, by contrast, had no effect on your empathy.

When they got the results, they were clear. The more novels you read, the better you were at reading other people's emotions. It was a huge effect. This wasn't just a sign that you were better educated—because reading nonfiction books, by contrast, had no effect on your empathy.

fiction is a kind of empathy gym,

reading fiction, over time, boosts your empathy.

We really only learn from books we cannot judge. The author of a book we could really judge ought surely to be learning from us.