Quotes About Literature

Those who do not read are the unfortunate ones. There's nothing wrong with them, but they are missing out on one of life's compensations and rewards.

there were books and authors to be discovered. A lifetime of reading lay ahead. Old books, new books, classics, thrillers, stories short and tall, travelogues, histories, biographies, comedies, comic strips, poems, memories, fantasies, fables…The adventure would end only when the lights went out for ever.

Book readers are special people, and they will always turn to books as the ultimate pleasure. Those who do not read are the unfortunate ones. There's nothing wrong with them, but they are missing out on one of life's compensations and rewards. A great book is a friend that never lets you down. You can return to it again and again, and the joy first derived from it will still be there.

when I was a boy, reading was my true religion. It helped me discover my soul.

I have signed books in the names of Enid Blyton, R.K. Narayan, Ian Botham, Daniel Defoe, Harry Potter and the Swiss Family Robinson. No one seems to mind.

Book readers are special people, and they will always turn to books as the ultimate pleasure.

What's the name of the book you're reading?' I asked. 'Tom Sawyer,' he said promptly. So I signed Mark Twain in his autograph book. He seemed quite happy.

People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity. Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversational. And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves.

On books and friends I spend my money; For stones and bricks I haven't any.

Americans like fat books and thin women.

Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it.

Anticipating that most poetry will be worse than carrying heavy luggage through O'Hare Airport, the public, to its loss, reads very little of it.

Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were.

There is a growing literature about the multitude of journalism's problems, but most of it is concerned with the editorial side of the business, possibly because most people competent to write about journalism are not comfortable writing about finance.

Now in truth our society is not a "capitalist system" at all, but a complex cultural and social arrangement that comprehends religion, morals, prescriptive political institutions, literary culture, a competitive economy, private property, and much more besides. It is not a system designed to secure and advance the interests of great possessors of capital goods unjustly acquired.

You want weapons? We're in a library. Books! Best weapons in the world.

My latest novel is A Striking Woman (Ottawa, Baico, 2023, $28, [email protected]

I find myself drawn to literature more now than in the past; not the individual works as much as the idea of literature—the heroic effort and nobility of our human desire to make beauty of our minds—which moves me to tears, and I have to brush them away, quickly, before anyone notices.

Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

She was happiest when sitting about and reading. She had read thousands of books, seeing no point in doing anything else unless you had to.

To say that Agatha Christie's characters are cardboard cut-outs is an insult to cardboard cut-outs.

Douglas Hyde's Beside the Fire, William Butler Yeats's The Celtic Twilight, Lady Augusta Gregory's Visions and Beliefs of the West of Ireland, and Standish O'Grady's collections not only established Irish folklore as one of the great oral literature traditions of Western civilization, but also provided an immense source of pride for the growing Irish Nationalist movement.

The tradition of Russian literature is also an eastern tradition of learning poetry and prose by heart.

This is the most intimate relationship between literature and its readers: they treat the text as a part of themselves, as a possession.