Quotes About Literature

'The Tin Drum' is one of my favourite books of all time - I've probably got 12 or 15 copies with different covers, different translations - but it's also just about my favourite film.

The English book world is relatively closed to translation, so only a small amount of foreign language work can come in.

Translations are very important these days, since an average person can only know 2-3 three languages. We have so many languages in India and poems are being written in as many of them.

The translator's task is to create, in his or her own language, the same tensions appearing in the original. That's hard!

I always read the translator's draft all the way through - a very laborious business.

When I act as a translator, I am really doing a performance for my fellow Anglophone readers in the West.

If a translation doesn't have obvious writing problems, it may seem quite all right at first glance. We readers, after all, quickly adapt to the style of a translator, stop noticing it, and get caught up in the story.

Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in origin. Its transmission was oral. Its transmission today is still in part oral, because we become acquainted with poetry through nursery rhymes, which we hear before we can read.

I don't set out to transmit a message. I don't write with a political point of view. There are no religious overtones. Looking back at my books, I can say, 'Oh, yes, it is there.' But it's not in my mind when I write.

From an early age, I had the idea that writing was truth-telling. It's on the record. Everybody can see it. Maybe it goes back to the sacred origins of literature - the holy book. There's nothing holy about it for me, but it should be serious, and it should be totally transparent.

One of the great advantages of the study of old Norse or Icelandic literature is the insight given by it into the origin of world-wide superstitions. Norse tradition is transparent as glacier ice, and its origin is as unmistakable.

I've been interested in writing and storytelling since I learned to read, but it wasn't until I read Dylan Thomas, when I was 14, that I became interested in language itself, and saw it as more than a transparent medium for a story.

It's the rare book that's able to transport you in a way that a movie does.

the purpose of all art was to lend cosmos to chaos, beauty to the land, and hope to those in despair. Lance had always believed that art should do more than just imitate life; it should guide it and steer it; keep it on the true north compass heading of our creator. That was the purpose of the Bible, and all other literature was subordinate to it.

More than this, I believe that the only lastingly important form of writing is writing for children. It is writing that is carried in the reader's heart for a lifetime; it is writing that speaks to the future.

Athens, nurse of men.

Said Hamlet to Ophelia, I'll draw a sketch of thee. What kind of pencil shall I use? 2B or not 2B?

I thought I'd begin by reading a poem by Shakespeare, but then I thought, why should I? He never reads any of mine.

Author, author, did you write these legs?( The Milligan- Puckoon

My fondness for good books was my salvation.

The flesh is sad, alas, and I have read all the books.

The flesh, alas, is sad, and I have read all the books.

The whole world is made to end up in a beautiful book.

I think it's a pity she doesn't read because it means we shan't ever be able to talk about the books we've both read and recommend them to one another.