Quotes About Literature

Books are not life, only its ashes.

La parola scritta m'ha insegnato ad ascoltare la voce umana, press'a poco come gli atteggiamenti maestosi e immoti delle statue m'hanno insegnato ad apprezzare i gesti degli uomini. Viceversa, con l'andar del tempo, la vita m'ha chiarito i libri.

Ho amato quella lingua per la sua flessibilità di corpo allenato, la ricchezza del vocabolario nel quale a ogni parola si afferma il contatto diretto e vario della realtà, l'ho amata perché quasi tutto quel che gli uomini han detto di meglio è stato detto in greco.

Bardzo ?le czu?bym si? w ?wiecie bez ksi??ek, ale rzeczywisto?ci w ksi??kach nie ma, bo si? w nich w ca?o?ci nie mie?ci.

quand je vois combien peu de gens lisent L'Iliade d'Homère, je prends plus gaiement mon parti d'être peu lu. (La conversation à Innsbruck)

Adaptar-me-ia dificilmente a um mundo sem livros, mas a realidade não está ali, porque eles não a contêm inteira.

aceptó un largo ensayo mío para la revista Les Lettres françaises que él dirigía en Buenos Aires con el apoyo de aquella admirable protectora de las letras que se llamó Victoria Ocampo.

I libri sono riserve di grano da ammassare per l'inverno dello spirito.

El verdadero lugar del nacimiento es aquel donde por primera vez nos miramos con una mirada inteligente; mis primeras patrias fueron los libros. Y, en menor grado, las escuelas.

eTraduire est la plus amoureuse des lectures.

Traduire est la plus amoureuse des lectures.

A library is a place to go for a reality check, a bracing dose of literature, or a true reflection of our history, whether it's a brick-and-mortar building constructed a century ago or a fanciful arrangement of computer codes. The librarian is the organizer, the animating spirit behind it, and the navigator. Her job is to create order out of the confusion of the past, even as she enables us to blast into the future.

Books are good because they are thick and you can hit someone with it.

Your mother goes to the public library, which has been down on its luck for a long time, like most things around here. Last time she brought back a copy of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine that was worn ragged, all held together with tape. She just sank into it, though, she just melted into it.

Every writer I know, when asked how to become a writer, responds with one word:Read.

I think fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification.

When I was a child, I read books. My reading was not indiscriminate. I preferred books that were old and thick and hard. I made vocabulary lists.

I think that to be a good writer, you have to put yourself on the line, you have to think deeply about what is meaningful to you and you have to make a good-faith effort to speak from the integrity of your own deep experience.... People don't think about assessing what is the deepest narrative for them. I think that that's about 99 percent of the subject of literature.... Write from it.

Over the years I have collected so many books that, in aggregate, they can fairly be called a library.I don't know what percentage of them I have read. Increasingly I wonder how many of them I ever will read. This has done nothing to dampen my pleasure in acquiring more books.

Gilead is a book that deserves to be read slowly, thoughtfully, and repeatedly … I would like to see copies of it dropped onto pews across our country, where it could sit among the Bibles and hymnals and collection envelopes. It would be a good reminder of what it means to lead a noble and moral life—and, for that matter, what it means to write a truly great novel."—Ann Patchett, The Village Voice

Books are good company. Nothing is more human than a book.

Indeed, unread books may govern the world, not well, since they so often are taken to justify our worst impulses and prejudices. The Holy Bible is a case in point

Theories about world literature, of which fairy tale is a fundamental part, emphasize the porousness of borders, geographical and inguistic: no frontiercan keep a good story from roaming. It will travel, and travel far, and travel back again in a different guise, a changed mood, and, above all, a new meaning.

Stories were migrants, blow-ins, border-crossers, tunnellers from France and Italy and more distant territories where earlier and similar stories had been passed on in Arabic and Persian and Chinese and Sanskrit.