Quotes About Literature

Chechnya forms the bookends to Tolstoy's career. He began writing his first novel, 'Childhood,' while in Starogladovskaya in Northern Chechnya, and his final novel, 'Hadji Murad,' is set in the Russo-Chechen War of the 19th century.

Tolstoy may not be showing that much of Russia at that time even. It's hard to tell. You tend to associate the quality of the period with what's lasted - what's still good. And that quality becomes the whole period.

One of the greatest things about writing as a profession is that the words of Tolstoy, Chesterton and Dostoyevsky have lived for a hundred years and are just as powerful today. Their words have changed me just as much as the people I actually met.

I'm never going to be Tolstoy.

I've read probably 25 or 30 books by Balzac, all of Tolstoy - the novels and letters - and all of Dickens. I learned my craft from these guys.

What Tolstoy is on about is that carnal love is not a good idea.

A great writer is a great writer... Tolstoy was not a woman, but 'Anna Karenina' is still a pretty good book.

Would you ask Picasso to explain 'Guernica?' Would you ask Nabokov to explain 'Lolita?' Would you ask Tolstoy about 'War and Peace?' No, you wouldn't dare.

When you started looking at the life of Tolstoy, there was so much passion and anger and drama surrounding him.

Let's face it: the 19th century really was the great age of the novel - Melville, Hawthorne, Tolstoy. These are the people I really admire.

I always really loved Russian literature, and I think Tolstoy's writing is full of a sense of melancholy and humanity, so it seems really modern.

I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.

I survived many a youth hostel bunk room reading Tolstoy by flashlight.

I am a writer. I am rooted in Tolstoy, I am rooted in Homer, I am rooted in Cervantes.

In 'A Confession,' Tolstoy found meaning that he could hold on to, and he lived for another 30 years.

There are people who read Tolstoy or Dostoevski who do not insist that their endings be happy or pleasant or, at least, not be depressing. But if you're writing mysteries - oh, no, you can't have an ending like that. It must be tidy.

To think of Tolstoy eating a sandwich is intrinsically kind of funny.

'Macbeth' was the first play I ever read. In fact, I remember my brother Tom, who is six years older than me, coming home from school and telling me about it. He was the one that really got me going.

Years later Fitzgerald inscribed a copy of Gatsby with what he perceived at the time to be its failings: "Gatsby was never quite real to me. His original served for a good enough exterior until about the middle of the book he grew thin and I began to fill him with my own emotional life. So he's synthetic—and that's one of the flaws of the book.

Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there.

Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there.

Coined by climate activist Dan Bloom to capture an emergent literary genre dealing with life on Earth after it's been ravaged by climate change, this [cli-fi] is fast becoming the most exciting and challenging subject area driving YA literature.

No. I can survive well enough on my own— if given the proper reading material.

More than anything he wanted to read, because only in a book could he escape from his own dark thoughts.