Quotes About Literature

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.

Literature's always a good card to play for Honours. It makes people think that Cabinet ministers are educated.

Literature can appeal to the soul only through the mind. Music goes direct. Its language is a language which the soul alone understands, but which the soul can never translate.

Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire, then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized, anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer -and if so, why?

Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.

I loved reading when I grew up but did feel totally invisible because I couldn't see myself and my life reflected in the books I was reading.

One important idea I hope is reflected in 'The Poe Shadow' is that fiction can add as much to history as nonfiction does.

Asian literature is evolving with the people. It's always a reflection on what's happening to the culture at large.

Any reflection about poetry should begin, or end, with this question: who and how many read poetry books?

Writers want to be reread. They want to think that their words don't just flash by but deserve some reflection.

My high school did not offer courses in philosophy, so the books that initially stimulated philosophical reflection in me were novels by Charles Dickens, Henry James, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

I'm quite reflective - I listen to music, I read, I walk with Django.

Periodically, I return to the classics for inspiration and refreshment.

There are probably some readers who don't want a great American writer to acknowledge that cleaning out the bottom drawer of the refrigerator has ever crossed their mind.

I take refuge in my books.

For years, in the wake of Rushdie, I had imagined magical realism to be the last refuge of the non-resident Indian.

The stories of the first refugees that I ever came across in literature - that lots of people ever came across - were in 'The Iliad': the escape of Aeneas with his father on his back, the Trojans, from their burning city, and the defeat of their kingdom and what they had to do to try and find safety.

When someone asks me to list the 10 best novels ever written, I always refuse to answer.

I'm a reader of Chinese literature, I like their films, but also: I've had great difficulty getting my work published in China; very little of it has been published there. The first two attempts to have all of my work published, for instance, were refused without any reason ever being given.

I devour books. But for the longest time, I refused to pay attention to genre or labels.

It must inquire not merely about the circumstances of the time in general, but in particular about the writer's position with regard to these things, the interests and motives, the leading ideas of his literary activity.

The dominant question for us with regard to literature has become, 'What does this have to do with me, with life as I know it?' That's the question answered by all these books about how Proust was actually a neuroscientist or how Proust can teach you emotional intelligence.

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity.