Quotes About Literature

Lest soviel ihr könnt! Lest Straßenschilder und Speisekarten, lest die Anschläge im Bürgermeisteramt, lest von mir aus Schundliteratur - aber lest! Lest! Sonst seid ihr verloren!

Anyone can write. Some people can write a bit better than others; they're called authors. Then there are some who can write better than authors; they're called artists.

No one who writes a good book is really dead.

Lesen, lesen, immer nur lesen und darüber die eigene erbärmliche Existenz vergessen!

In my profession it isn't a question of telling good literature from bad. Really good literature is seldom appreciated in its own day. The best authors die poor, the bad ones make money — it's always been like that. What do I, an agent, get out of a literary genius who won't be discovered for another hundred years? I'll be dead myself then. Successful incompetents are what I need.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written, that's all.

The problem is this: in order to make money- lots of money- we don't need flawless literary masterpieces. What we need is mediocre rubbish, trash suitable for mass consumption. More and more, bigger and bigger blockbusters of less and less significance. What counts is the paper we sell, not the words that are printed on it.

I'm not saying that you have to be a reader to save your soul in the modern world. I'm saying it helps.

The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink.

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost any subject he may.

Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.

I protest, for about the hundredth time, against the slipshod method of quoting a mere author's name, without any indication of the work of that author in which the alleged quotation may be found. Let us have accurate quotations and exact references, wherever such are to be found. A quotation without a reference is like a geological specimen of unknown locality.

The Cat in the Hat exposes the in-betweenness of it all, the midcentury breakdown in meaning, out of which Tom Petty's generation emerged, a little starved for something to call their own. It's the rock and roll of children's literature.

His [the author's] renown… has been purchased, not by deeds of violence and blood, but by the diligent dispensation of pleasure.

The great British Library --an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or pure English, undefiled wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought.

The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible.

Washington Irving

Washington Irving

In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low levels of life, and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind; and when the universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growth of poetic feeling, and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I question whether it would not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn to these records of prouder times and loftier modes of thinking; and to steep himself to the very lips in old Spanish romance.

Washington Irving

Washington Irving

Washington Irving

Washington Irving