Quotes About Literature

Book lust forever!

If you still don't like a book after slogging through the first 50 pages, set it aside. If you're more than 50 years old, subtract your age from 100 and only grant it that many pages.

I can relate to the novelist Carrie Brown...who described herself as being 'a promiscuous reader.' I'll give almost any book a chance to have its way with me.

Wild Life by Molly Gloss Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide by Robert Michael Pyle

The best place to begin is with the Library of America's two-volume collection, Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s & 40s and Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s. Together they include all the major writers as well as bring some lesser-known authors to a wider audience. In general chronological order, here are some depths to which you can lower yourself:

The three grand old men of Cuban literature are Alejo Carpentier (his masterpiece is The Lost Steps); José Lezama Lima (whose autobiographical novel Paradiso infuriated Castro); and Guillermo Cabrera Infante (the setting of his novel Three Trapped Tigers—pre-Castro Havana—reminded me of Oscar Hijuelos's A Simple Habana Melody From When the World Was Good).

With the onset of World War I and the deaths of thousands of young men, a new generation of spiritualists appeared. One of the most prominent was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes detective series, whose pro-spiritualist book New Revelation was published in 1917.

That's the thing about Oxford. You go for a drink in a pub with some guy and next thing he's quoting Hamlet.

I'm glad you and Chloe have become friends," in an alarmingly hopeful way that was very clearly only one unfortunate literature assignment away from turning into come live with me and be my love, optionally etched onto metal with little hearts around it.

Uma casa que não tinha pelo menos dois ou três livros exibidos com orgulho nas paredes era uma casa pobre.

Maybe we should just wander around other countries carrying books.

Only in words on a page can it still be yesterday.

I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story and the delicious ache of the last page.

As Carlyle put it—"All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been—it is lying in matchless preservation in the pages of books.

The books awed her by size, thickness, the staggering mass of lines and words to read before she could read all of them. Then having read all of the books must she carry in her head all that knowledge from the books? This too staggered her. Wouldn't my head feel queer? she asked Elder Brewster. Wouldn't my head feel heavy carrying so much knowledge? Could any of it spill out if there was too much?

Few things leave a deeper mark on the reader, than the first book that finds its way to his heart.

The only way you can truly get to know an author is through the trail of ink he leaves behind him. The person you think you see is only an empty character: truth is always hidden in fiction.

Literature, at least good literature, is science tempered with the blood of art. Like architecture or music.

Pocas cosas marcan tanto a un lector como el primer libro que realmente se abre camino hasta su corazón. Aquellas primeras imágenes, el eco de esas palabras que creemos haber dejado atrás, nos acompañan toda la vida y esconden un palacio en nuestra memoria al que, tarde o temprano –no importa cuántos libros leamos, cuántos mundos descubramos, cuánto aprendamos u olvidemos–, vamos a regresar.

I decided that my existence would be one of books and silence.

Cada libro, cada tomo que ves, tiene alma. El alma de quién lo escribió, y el alma de quiénes lo leyeron y vivieron y soñaron con él. Cada vez que un libro cambia de manos, cada vez que alguien desliza la mirada por sus páginas, su espíritu crece y se hace fuerte.

That day was turning out to be longer than The Brothers Karamazov.

Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human.

You can come share a tasty meal of bread, raisins, and fresh cheese. With that, and The Count of Monte Cristo, anyone can live to a hundred.