Quotes About Literature

I spent years in a graduate literature program learning what makes great writing, and the only conclusion we came to was that the future of graduate literature programs was safe because nobody is ever going to agree on what makes great writing.

Three chapters is an awfully long time in book terms. You see, time moves differently in novels. The author could, for instance, say, "And I spent fourteen years in prison, where I obtained the learning of a gentleman and discovered the location of a buried treasure." Now

I didn't know there were so many books in the world," Syl said. "Won't they use up all the words? Seems like eventually you'd say everything that could be said!

Banning books is tricky business, Vin—the more stink the Ministry makes about a text, the more attention it will draw, and the more people will be tempted to read it.

I kind of lost track of time...." "For two hours?" Elend nodded sheepishly. "There were books involved.

Brandon Sanderson

I think reading is important for a variety of things. I mean, first of all, it's a way to get information and find out what's going on in the world. But also, it helps your imagination.

English was the only class I felt like I might be able to keep up with him, since I'd always been a big reader. Books were so much easier to relate to than people.

It seems unlikely that so much literature could be made from twenty-six letters. Doesn't it seem it could all be boiled down to one sentence?

When a woman you love hits you on the head with a book you love, is that love?

I left school at 16 but I wish I'd gone to university - I think I would have studied English literature. I had a knack for that. But I don't think you have the kind of wisdom at 16 to make that decision.

Soon she came to understand how essential it was to know these things. That was when she began to read.

I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. The day Hazlitt came he opened to I hate to read new books, and I hollered Comrade! to whoever owned it before me.

I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone long gone has called my attention to.

If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much.

Standing there, staring at the long shelves crammed with books, I felt myself relax and was suddenly at peace.

Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books?

But I don't know, maybe it's just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: It's there.

I personally can't think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.

I don't browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you like it you go to a bookshop and buy it.

I despair of ever getting it through anybody's head I am not interested in bookshops, I am interested in what's written in the books. I don't browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you like it you go to a bookshop and buy it.

I'll have mine [The Book-Lovers' Anthology] till the day I die - and die happy in the knowledge that I'm leaving it behind for someone else to love. I shall sprinkle pale pencil marks through it pointing out the best passages to some book-lover yet unborn.

I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: 'It's there.' Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. Looking around the rug one thing's for sure: it's here.

And for at least that moment, I wouldn't have traded the hundreds of books I've read for the few I know almost by heart.