Quotes About Literature

The only advice anybody can give is if you want to be a writer, keep writing. And read all you can, read everything.

For the book unwritten is the book burned.

J'ai rencontré quelqu'un qui avait si peu lu qu'il devait inventer lui-même ses citations de classiques.

No one reads; if someone does read, he doesn't understand; if he understands, he immediately forgets.

I never learned anything at all in school and didn't read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years old.

The longest running tradition in literature is the horror tale, and it goes back to Beowulf, and I'm sure it goes back to the oral tales of "You better not go by the swamp, because there's something in there.…" These tales of warning, of danger—either in a physical or a mental way—which show the ways others have dealt with it, have been around a long, long, time. And will be around until the end of time.

Does it matter that people and things Have words, Have names? If not, Why read any book? A litany of useless letters Detached from bone, muscle. Or are words the only things that make the muscle, bone, memory, movement, Person Real?

O amor, admito-o com um suspiro, é muito mais forte que a literatura, porém o amor na literatura é bem mais belo do que na própria vida. Ao menos de vez em quando permite iludirmo-nos.

Da leitura resulta a autoconfiança, da autoconfiança resulta a coragem de ter ideias próprias. Os homens não gostam necessariamente de mulheres que lêem.

Reading is an act of friendly isolation. When we are reading, we make ourselves unapproachable in a tactful way. Perhaps that is exactly what has interested painters for so long in the portrayal of readers: showing people in a state of deepest intimacy not intended for outsiders. If the viewer were to approach the reader in real life, this condition would immediately be threatened. So painting allows us to see what we actually cannot see, or see only at the price of destroying it.

Plimpton was a presence. He looked for ways in which he could make himself ridiculous. That made him a great storyteller.

My assumption, which goes against the orthodox view of knowledge, is that there is no direct correlation between objects and knowledge and that understanding is constantly recreated. This work is thus part of a growing body of literature in the social sciences and humanities that questions the possibility of a singular truth.

Los libros sólo se escriben para, por encima del propio aliento, unir a los seres humanos, y así defendernos frente al inexorable reverso de toda existencia: la fugacidad y el olvido

One only makes books in order to keep in touch with one's fellows after one has ceased to breath, and thus to defend oneself against the inexorable fate of all that lives - transitoriness and oblivion.

And if I am asked today to advise a young writer who has not yet made up his mind what way to go, I would try to persuade him to devote himself first to the work of someone greater, interpreting or translating him.

Books are my kingdom. And here I seek to reign as absolute lord.

when my own works disappeared from the German language I could more clearly grasp his lament at being able to produce the created word only in translation, in a diluted, altered medium.

Estos momentos vivos están narrados en un estilo clásico de la literatura de aventuras, pero con la atrayente tensión de su pluma que percibe el latido del corazón humano ante el peligro o el momento singular.

Books are, I find, the best provisions a man can take with him on life's journey.

Ils avaient fui les perils de la conversation pour le terrain plus rassurant des livres.

In seinem Schlösschen, wo er ab 1920 mit seiner Frau und deren zwei Töchtern aus erster Ehe lebt, entstehen Novellen, Dramen und Erzählungen.

Cómo soporta uno que lo único que puede llegar a conocer sea lo que llega por casualidad a sus ojos, a sus oídos? ¿Cómo se puede respirar sin el aire universal que brota de los libros?

Mendel, de Jakob Mendel, Mendel el de los libros.

A new world suddenly opened up on the printed page before me, the words moved vigorously towards me as if they had been seeking me for centuries...