Quotes About Literature

The main characters in a novel must necessarily have some kinship to the author, they come out of his body as a child comes from the womb, then the umbilical cord is cut, and they grow into independence. The more the author knows of his own character the more he can distance himself from his invented characters and the more room they have to grow in.

A veces pienso que nuestra vida está hecha más por los libros que leemos que por la gente que conocemos: en los libros aprendemos, de segunda mano, qué es el amor y el dolor. Aun cuando tenemos la suerte de enamorarnos es porque nos hemos dejado influir por lo que hemos leído. Si yo no había llegado a conocer el amor, era porque en la biblioteca de mi padre faltaban los libros adecuados.

quatre cent vingt et un

Dear Unknown Reader, do not close this Book, but read a little before you sleep. There is Wisdom here. Your Unknown Friend.' I

When I am alone I read – I hide myself in my books. In them I can find the faith of better men than myself

In onze jeugd zijn alle boeken toekomstvoorspellingen.

No one needs a first edition. Whoever wrote it; even if it was Moses.

And books, she knew by then, were one of the necessities, the rocks of her life.

La gente non legge forse i libri per fuggire da se stessa, e per tenere lontani i guai che ne scandiscono l'esistenza?

You ain't a southern gentleman till you dipped your pen in ink

I remember something similar from reading Anais Nin in college, that Nin had seduced her father several times; but Nin had been profligate in her sexual adventures, and besides, she was French.

Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Annie

We became friends over detective fiction. She's a true friend.

the inerrancy of the Bible relates to the authors' original intent, not necessarily to our interpretation of a passage. Moreover, the inerrancy of an author's writing must be understood in accordance with the genre of literature the author was using and the culture the author was writing within. For example, we cannot say that an ancient author was incorrect in what he said just because he did not employ the same standard of precision we employ in our culture.

hate has no literature: real fear and real hate have no words

Fear dries a man's mouth, and hate strangles him. That's why hate has no great literature: real fear and real hate have no words.

'The Practical Heart' was published one week before the World Trade towers collapsed. Book reviewing and all else in our culture stopped dead-still for half a year. I went on the book tour anyway. But I felt like the apostle Paul going unto the catacombs where scared believers hid and prayed.

I prefer reading to writing. Reading changes your world view. Writing changes absolutely nothing. Except, of course, when it makes you rich.

I do believe that the genre reached its peak before the First World War.

'All Quiet on the Western Front' is just sort of there isn't it? Every single trope of the First World War, and anti-war writing in general, is in there.

Aside from his other achievements, Winston Churchill wrote a six-volume, 1.9m-word account of the second world war and his role in winning it.

I've read a lot of war writing, even World War I writing, the British war poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves's memoir 'Goodbye to All That,' and a civilian memoir, 'Testament of Youth,' by Vera Brittain.

I chose a time in the century which had the greatest moments for novels - the late '30s and World War II.

By the 1950s The Novel had become a nationwide tournament. There was a magical assumption that the end of World War II in 1945 was the dawn of a new golden age of the American Novel, like the Hemingway-Dos Passos-Fitzgerald era after World War I.