Quotes About Literature

I am addicted to the printed word, and my idea of a good time is a good book.

A little-known fact about me: I read all the time.

It's the only time my education has come in remotely handy. -on using her Russian literature studies for copying her "Van Helsing" script into Russian to acquire a Slavic accent.

I read everything by Ian McEwan, he is so elegant. I love reading anything about Shakespeare, too. He is my first love. If I had a time machine, I would be hanging out with him.

My mom wasn't, like, she was reading all these historical romance novels the majority of the time. She read a feminist book and then my dad would sit down and explain it to her like she was an idiot.

I was fantastically well versed by the time I left school. I had a teacher who put A Clockwork Orange my way, and Catcher in the Rye.

I love James Baldwin essays, but also his novels. I recently read "Another Country." I couldn't believe how ahead of his time he was.

Books are islands in the ocean of time. They are also oases in the deserts of time.

I've had a tough time with Pynchon. I liked him very much when I first read him. I liked him less with each book. He got denser and more complex in a way that didn't really pay off.

Books are slow. They require time; they are written slowly, published slowly, and read slowly.

Of all the poetry written in our generation, Frost's is most likely to stand the test of time

And if the reader has no taste for what he reads, all the time is wasted

For a long time, I worked in film and theater, but reading started when I was much younger. I was always a reader.

There's so many good books, but I'm always like, "I'm sorry, I have five more Faulkners to read, I can't be bothered." Most of the time when you try, you fall on the wrong one.

I have two sisters, and I think siblings are always going to be irresistible for novelists. They have been throughout time and they'll continue to be.

Re-reading is much underrated. I've read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold once every five years since I was 15. I only started to understand it the third time.

A reader can never tell if it's a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you're reading it, they're the same. It's a thimble. It's in the book.

Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.

I like a book to be full of the memory of what it is, a voice in an endless conversation, and yet at the same time to be new.

When I was 13 or 14, I started devouring novels; literature took quite a while to take me over, but it caught up just in time to save me from becoming a mathematician.

I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.

Creed and opinion change with time, and their symbols perish; but Literature and its temples are sacred to all creeds and inviolate.

Muse, time has taught me that all metaphysical systems, even historical facts given as truths, are hardly that, so I amuse myself with more agreeable lies; I no longer read anything but novels.

My mother was an English teacher before she became a full-time mom, and a huge proponent of reading, so she made sure I was an early and vigorous reader.