Quotes About Literature

What's missing from the literature of our species are the stories of the peasants. The filthy illiterate. Those with no firm address, no surname. No one to impress, nothing to lose. But the poor tell stories, too.

Children talk themselves out of their convictions as they grow up and become distracted by their huge selfish selves. All the literature is consistent on this point. Children begin to think they've imagined us.

Only, sometimes, in the text of a book here and there, we tap the page with a finger and say, "This is what my lost days were like. Something like this.

Well, that's not poetry, that's propaganda, and not even good propaganda at that.

Alice less winsome than weird, and treated Lydia like a Cerberus

Literary pleasure, and a sense of recognition and identification, real though they are, burn off like alcohol in the flame of the next heated moment.

The person who would become a lifelong reader should stumble upon very rich stuff first, early, and often. It lived within, a most agreeable kind of haunting.

The translator, we should know, is a writer too. As a matter of fact, he could be called the ideal writer because all he has to do is write; plot, theme, characters, and all other essentials have already been provided, so he can just sit down and write his ass off. (p. 8)

Maintain a big stack. I find that I read much more when I have a pile waiting for me. Right now, I have to admit, my stack is so big that it's a bit alarming, but I'll get it down to a more reasonable size before too long.

Japanese ideas about religion, architecture, theater, and literature are based on wa and shunyata—concepts of plentitude and uncertainty, of togetherness framed by impermanence.

Graham Greene, Beryl Bainbridge, Barbara Vine, Seamus Heaney, some Dan Turner — Hollywood Detective, and Shakespeare's sonnets.

She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague "she" of all the poetry books.

I'm absolutely removed from the world at such times...The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of - I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters - I live and breath with them.

An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

Never have things of the spirit counted for so little. Never has hatred for everything great been so manifest – disdain for Beauty, execration of literature. I have always tried to live in an ivory tower, but a tide of shit is beating at its walls, threatening to undermine it.

Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.

Let us not kid ourselves; let us remember that literature is of no use whatever, except in the very special case of somebody's wishing to become, of all things, a Professor of Literature.

In her enthusiasms she had always looked for something tangible: she had always loved church for its flowers, music for its romantic words, literature for its power to stir the passions and she rebelled before the mysteries of faith just as she grew ever more restive under discipline, which was antipathetic to her nature.

Has it ever happened to you, Léon went on, to come across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?

So long as there is gold underneath, who cares about the dust on top? Literature! That old whore! We must try to dose her with mercury and pills and clean her out from top to bottom, she has been so ultra-screwed by filthy pricks!

The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of--I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters--I live and breathe them.

Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.

Prima di sposarsi, Emma aveva creduto di essere innamorata, ma la felicità che avrebbe dovuto nascere da questo amore non esisteva, ed ella pensava ormai di essersi sbagliata. Cercava ora di capire cosa volessero dire realmente le parole felicità, passione, ebbrezza, che le erano sembrate così belle nei libri.

What a scholar one might be if one knew well only some half a dozen books.