Quotes About Literature

Non badavo granché a tematiche o felicità di stile, e saltavo le descrizioni minute di tempo atmosferico, paesaggi e interni. Volevo personaggi in cui potessi credere, e volevo provare curiosità per ciò che avrebbero vissuto. […] Romanzi a sensazione, alta letteratura e tutto ciò che stava nel mezzo: a ognuno riservavo lo stesso rude trattamento.

Novels without female characters were a lifeless desert.

She had lolled about for three years at Girton with the kind of books she could equally have read at home--Jane Austen, Dickens, Conrad, all in the library downstairs, in complete sets. How had that pursuit, reading the novels that others took as their leisure, let her think she was superior to anyone else?

Cecilia knew she could not go on wasting her days in the stews of her untidied room, lying on her bed in a haze of smoke, chin propped on her hand, pins and needles spreading up through her arm as she read her way through Richardson's Clarissa .

Despite his first, the study of English literature seemed in retrospect an absorbing parlor game, and reading books and having opinions about them, the desirable adjunct to a civilized existence. But it was not the core, whatever Dr. Leavis said in his lectures.

I read anything I saw lying around. Pulp fiction, great literature and everything in between - I gave them all the same rough treatment.

He found and praised Muriel Spark's The Driver's Seat . I said I found it too schematic and preferred The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie . He nodded, but not in agreement, it seemed, more like a therapist who now understood my problem.

I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction. It is the beautiful daughter of a rambling, bloated ill-shaven giant (but a giant who's a genius on his best days).

Jer,u tome sigurno i jest stvar:bit ?e bolji lije?nik jer je ?itao književnost.Kakva sve duboka objašnjenja njegova preina?ena senzibilnost može iš?itati iz ljudske patnje,iz samouništavaju?e gluposti ili puke zle sre?e koja je ljude natjerala u bolest!Ro?enje,smrt i krhkost izme?u njih.Uspon i pad-to je lije?nikov posao,a to je i književnost.

If someone where playing tennis you wouldn't walk onto the court and begin to have a conversion with them, likewise I think reading is at least as important as a game of tennis.

Birth, death, and frailty in between. Rise and fall- this was the doctor's business, and it was literature's too.

We were the only customers downstairs in the shop and there were no windows and only two dim bulbs, without shades. There was a pleasant soporific smell, as though the books had stolen most of the air.

Podía hablar de los bosques en invierno, y del siniestro muro de un castillo. ¿Pero cómo hablar de sentimientos?

The novel is too capacious, inclusive, unruly, and personal for perfection. Too long, sometimes too much like life.

Heller's Catch-18, Fitzgerald's The High-Bouncing Lover, Orwell's The Last Man in Europe, Tolstoy's All's Well That Ends Well

Bitte keine magischen Zwergentrommler mehr', flehte er sie in einem Brief an, nachdem er seine Tirade abgelassen hatte. 'Keine Gespenster, Engel, Teufel oder Verwandlungen mehr. Wenn alles passieren kann, ist alles gleichgültig. Für mich ist das nichts als Kitsch.' / 'Du Dussel', tadelte sie ihn auf einer Postkarte, 'Du Erbsenzähler. Das ist Literatur, keine Physik!

Her cleverness, her love and knowledge of music, literature, her liveliness and charm when he was securely hers masked her desperation.

Love stories like Jane Austen's used to conclude chastely with preparations for a wedding. Now their climax lay on the far side of carnal knowledge, where all of complexity waited.

Los relatos no se venden. Los editores suelen hacer estas colecciones como un favor a sus autores consagrados.

I experienced only the glow of an extraordinary reading experience, a form of profound gratitude familiar to all who love literature.

Reading was my way of not thinking about maths. More than that (or do I mean less?), it was my way of not thinking.

From the first sentence, we come into a presence, and we can see for ourselves the quality of a particular mind; in a matter of minutes we may read the fruits of a long-forgotten afternoon, an afternoon's work done in isolation, 150 years ago. And what was once an unfolding personal secret is now ours.

Science fiction writers and thriller writers and traditional so-called 'literary' novelists are all novelists, and they finally have to be judged on how good they are, not on which category they belong in.

King, Dean. Harbors and High Seas: An Atlas and Geographical Guide to the Complete Aubrey-Maturin Novels of Patrick O'Brian. New York: Owl Books, 2000.