Quotes About Literature

vom Geschlecht jener, die glauben, ohne Literatur und Musik, ohne Kunst und das Theater habe das Leben keinen Sinn

Wer Kritik als Beruf ausübt, weiß genau, was für ihn unentwegt auf dem Spiel steht – sein Renommee und damit die Basis seiner Existenz als Schriftsteller. Er kann es sich deshalb nicht leisten, leichtfertig zu urteilen.

But literature served only as a preparation for the real goal. This was rhetoric, the key to an active political career under the empire, as it had been under the Republic.

The Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant

Ein Zimmer ohne Bücher ist wie ein Körper ohne Seele.

So it may well be believed that when I found him taking a complete holiday, with a vast supply of books at command, he had the air of indulging in a literary debauch, if the term may be applied to so honorable an occupation.

Ein Raum ohne Bücher ist wie ein Körper ohne Seele.

Ut conclave sine libris ita corpus sine anima

Fieri autem potest ut recte quis sentiat et id, quod sentit, polite eloqui non possit; sed mandare quemquam litteris cogitationes suas, qui eas nec disponere nec illustrare possit nec delectatione aliqua adlicere lectorem, hominis est intemperanter abutentis et otio et litteris.

An analogy says that A is to B as C is to D. A metaphor says that A is B, or substitutes B for A. A simile says that A is like B.

The American Heritage Dictionary definition says a metaphor is "an implicit comparison." This unusual term is used for one reason, and one reason only: to distinguish it from a simile, which makes an explicit—or direct—comparison.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

You are of course fully in control of what you choose to read

There were still newspapers, then. We used to read them in bed. It's French, he said. From m'aidez . Help Me.

Some people write letters, in the library.

Once in a while, though, he went on binges. He would sneak into bookstores or libraries, lurk around the racks where the little magazines were kept; sometimes he'd buy one. Dead poets were his business, living ones his vice. Much of the stuff he read was crap and he knew it; still, it gave him an odd lift. Then there would be the occasional real poem, and he would catch his breath. Nothing else could drop him through space like that, then catch him; nothing else could peel him open.

The subliterary fiction she was churning out was many decades away from being in any way respectable. There was a small group that confessed to reading The Lord of the Rings, though you had to justify it through an interest in Old Norse.

Northrop] Frye was concerned mostly with literary criticism, and myths interested him as structural elements in works of literature. He used the word myth to mean story, without attaching any connotation of truth or falsehood to it; but a myth is a story of a certain kind. The myths of a culture are those stories it takes seriously—the ones that are thought to be a key to its identity.

It was a wicked game. "Homer," says Snowman, making his way through the dripping-wet vegetation. "The Divine Comedy. Greek statuary. Aqueducts. Paradise Lost. Mozart's music. Shakespeare, complete works. The Brontës. Tolstoy. The Pearl Mosque. Chartres Cathedral. Bach. Rembrandt. Verdi. Joyce. Penicillin. Keats. Turner. Heart transplants. Polio vaccine. Berlioz. Baudelaire. Bartok. Yeats. Woolf.

Never underestimate the value of superior hair as a literary influence.

how outrageous could he get, in the realm of fatuous neologism, and still achieve praise?

It's literature. It's all books. There are good books and bad books. Literary fiction can be bad, and so can sci-fi. Sci-fi can be wonderful and so can literary fiction. As long as it's a good book, who cares? Hold my attention; that's all I ask. Make me believe.

If writing novels - and reading them - have any redeeming social value, it's probably that they force you to imagine what it's like to be somebody else. Which increasingly is something we all need to know.

Women do not usually write novels of the type favoured by men but men are known to write novels of the type favoured by women. Some people find this odd.