Quotes About Literature

Generally speaking, books don't cause much harm. Except when you read them, that is. Then they cause all kinds of problems.

if you memorize three hundred Tang poems, you might be able to write a little.

BRW [Black & Red Ware] is the Pan-Indian Pot and Sangam literature is the Pan-Indian Literature. The Pot Route that links Indus and Vaigai was made of clay, overlaid with burnt bricks and embellished with copper. It is the red-topped road to Tamil antiquity, and the colour was a deep Dravidian Red.

the Sangam Tamil corpus is essentially a literature of diverse landscapes and a plural demography. Sangam texts stand witness to the plural social systems, polity, cultural ethos and ideology of the early Tamils. At the same time, they also represent some of the 'carried forward' memories that probably emulate the ideologies of the IVC [Indus Valley Civilization], including its inherent pluralism.

The Sangam Corpus is one body of literature that could possibly represent the ethos of the IVC [Indus Valley Civilization] such as maritime trade, eminence of crafts and skills, technology and knowledge, spread of literacy, Mother Goddess worship, participatory festivals and pass-time activities, secular orientation, enjoyment associated with group-bathing, place of flora and fauna in narratives, writing and graffiti skills.

Because how dare we write our own stories, in our own voices?' CaZZ answers. 'True that,' Tanya says. 'Banning our books would be their way of erasing us, of making us — and the world we live in — invisible,' CaZZ says.

Read. Read. Read. Just don't read one type of book. Read different books by various authors so that you develop different style.

It's hard for children's authors to be accepted when they try to write adult books. J.K. Rowling is the exception because people are so eager to read anything by her, but it took Judy Blume three or four tries before she had a success.

Read. Read. Read. Just don't read one type of book. Read different books by various authors so that you develop different style.

Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable." Louisa May Alcott

Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.

I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time.

I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time. It is the world outside that box that gives me trouble. I have adapted tamely, though not conventionally, to this visible world so I can retreat without much inconvenience into my inner world of books.

I slipped into art to escape life. I sneaked off into literature.

Literature gives me life, and life kills me. Well, life kills everyone.

Almost everything that men have said best has been said in Greek.

Most of the books published these days consist of a series of whines followed by an epiphany.

How does the old cliché go? When every Arab girl stood in line waiting for God to hand out the desperate-to-get-married gene, I must have been somewhere else, probably lost in a book.

Nick commenced a monologue explaining the impossibility of such a phenomenon: the subordination of content to the aesthetics of language in Arabic literature, the dominance of panegyrics and eulogies as an art form, etc.

Of course, the pile grows and grows until I decide that I'm not going to buy a single book until I read my stack. Sometimes that works.

Alain Robbe-Grillet once wrote that the worst thing to happen to the novel was the arrival of psychology. You can assume he meant that now we all expect to understand the motivation behind each character's actions, as if that's possible, as if life works that way. I've read so many recent novels, particularly those published in the Anglo world, that are dull and trite because I'm always supposed to infer causality.

Alain Robbe-Grillet once wrote that the worst thing to happen to the novel was the arrival of psychology.

Translation is so important. The new American translations of the Bible sound like a Judith Krantz novel.

I am a reader. Yes, I am that, a reader with nagging back pain.