Quotes About Literature

A man loses contact with reality if he is not surrounded by his books.

Les livres ont-ils pour mission d'embellir la vie ou de la restituer telle quelle ?

Werther s-a sinucis, apoi tineri din toat? Europa l-au urmat ?i s-au sinucis ?i ei, mai pu?in autorul lui, Goethe, viclean maestru al practicii, a tr?it.

In leaving the café I asked Joyce how long he had been working on Ulysses . "About five years," he said. "But in a sense all my life." "Some of your contemporaries," I said, "think two books a year an average output." "Yes," said Joyce. "But how do they do it? They talk them into a typewriter. I feel quite capable of doing that if I wanted to do it. But what's the use? It isn't worth doing.

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

I talked this matter over with Douglas more than once. He did not know French well; but he could understand it and he was a rarely good translator as his version of a Baudelaire sonnet shows. In any dispute as to the value of a word or phrase I should prefer his opinion to Oscar's. But Ross is doubtless right on this point. F.H.]

He was an intense admirer of Swinburne and constantly reading his poems; John Addington Symond's works too, on the Greek authors, were perpetually in his hands. He never entertained any pronounced views on social, religious or political questions while in College; he seemed to be altogether devoted to literary matters.

Shakespeare is like mashed potatoes, you can never get enough of him.

willow trees, willow trees they remind me of Desdemona I'm so damned literary and at the same time the waters rushing past remind me of nothing

I dislike a great deal of contemporary poetry — all of the past you read is usually quite great — but it is a useful thorn to have in one's side.

The guy who wrote The Doors of Perception got off way easier, though, especially since the worst band in the history of the world, the Doors, named themselves after it. He has a lot to answer for.

I'm mad about good books , can't get my fill .

Take the Kama Sutra. How many people died from the Kama Sutra as opposed to the Bible? Who wins?

If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation.

Of making many books there is no end—So Sancho Panza said, and so say I.Thou wert my guide, philosopher and friendWhen only one is shining in the sky.

The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are purely imaginary.

The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are imaginary.

Prose talks and poetry sings.

Poetry, it is often said and loudly so, is life's true mirror. But a monkey looking into a work of literature looks in vain for Socrates.

Books are a narcotic.

Papá adoraba a los animales (...) eso es algo que me ha legado, lo mismo que el amor a Italia, a la literatura o a la historia de las civilizaciones. Cierto es que su animalofilia no le privaba de ponerse hasta arriba de asados, filetes o salchichas.

I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.

I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.

Quotations are the backbone of much of literature, and of the transmission of art and thought more generally. . . . The delight is our natural response to the monuments of creativity and wisdom, kept alive by quotations, a communal bond uniting us with past culture and with other lovers of words and ideas in our own time.