Quotes About Literature

Russian short story master Isaac Babel put it, "no iron spike can pierce a human heart as icily as a period in the right place." We're

I'd say there's a general thesis in here somewhere: any story that suffers from what seems like a moral failing (that seems sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, pedantic, appropriative, derivative of another writer's work, and so on) will be seen, with sufficient analytical snooping, to be suffering from a technical failing, and if that failing is addressed, it will (always) become a better story.

We're in a culture that doesn't value writing as highly as it should. And I think we see that in our public discourse, I think we see that in our susceptibility to the big ol' lie.

El escritor de hoy tiende a usar cada vez menos palabras y cada vez más simples, tanto porque la cultura de masas ha diluido el concepto de cultura literaria como porque la suma de realidades que el lenguaje podía expresar de forma necesaria y suficiente ha disminuido de manera alarmante.

George Steiner

George Steiner

Ningún lugar es aburrido si me dan una mesa, buen café y unos libros. Eso es una patria.

Tennyson shall have his day, and Donne his eclipse.

For the late-twentieth-century reader, says Borges, Joyce comes before Homer, and the Odyssey is a late commentary on Ulysses .

Una mayoría incalculable de la humanidad elegirá ver telenovelas en vez de leer a Esquilo;

To encourage literature and the arts is a duty which every good citizen owes to his country.

I conceive a knowledge of books is the basis upon which other knowledge is to be built.

A knowledge of books is the basis upon which other knowledge is to be built.

you will agree with me in opinion that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

If literature stays away from evil, it rapidly becomes boring.

Only literature could reveal the process of breaking the law - without which the law would have no end - independently of the necessity to create order.

Literature is communication. Communication requires loyalty. A rigorous morality results from complicity in the knowledge of Evil, which is the basis of intense communication.

Though the immediate impression of rebellion may obscure the fact, the task of authentic literature is nevertheless only conceivable in terms of a desire for fundamental communication with the reader.

on the question if he thought The Holy Ghost wrote the bible): I think The Holy Ghost has written all books.

INTERVIEWER What do you mean by "too literary"? What do you cut out, certain kinds of words? SIMENON Adjectives, adverbs, and every word which is there just to make an effect. Every sentence which is there just for the sentence. You know, you have a beautiful sentence—cut it. Every time I find such a thing in one of my novels it is to be cut.

I think myself I ought to be shot for writing such nonsense .... But it's unquestionably good escapist literature and I think I should rather like it if I were sitting in an air-raid shelter or recovering from flu. [As quoted in Jane Aiken Hodge, The Private World of Georgette Heyer (p. xii).]

I don't think I am green. It's true I only know what I've read in books, but I've read a great many books

Sophia, with real nobility of character, then asked Papa to explain something she had read in Sir John Malcolm's History of Persia, which the Vicar, whose only personal extravagance was his purchase of books, had lately added to his library.

Reflect that you could have written the book so much better yourself, if only you had the time and the inclination for the task; and that the literate won't be listening, if you're speaking on air, or doing more than glance at your review, if it appears in print; and go right ahead! There will be no reprisals. If the author is young and struggling, he won't dare to expose your pretensions; and if he is well established he won't think it worth while to do so.