Quotes About Literature

For a long time, there had no longer been any books capable of saving him, but only sentences, individual sentences, from Novalis, for instance, from Montaigne, from Spinoza, or from Pascal, which he had to clutch at from time to time in order not to go under.

arts, I said, just like that in painting, in literature, I said, even philosophers are ignorant of philosophy. Most artists are ignorant of their art. They have a dilettante's notion of art, remain stuck all their lives in dilettantism, even the most famous artists in the world. We

Someone had to go first, show that there was a life to be recorded here, that this place, this new set of possibilities, could inspire a new literature. Cooper set the signpost on the road, and hearty travelers have been following it ever since.

We sometimes hear of the death of literature or of this or that genre, but literature doesn't die, just as it doesn't 'progress' or 'decay.' It expands, it increases. When we feel that it has become stagnant or stale, that usually just means we ourselves are not paying sufficient attention.

T here's no written rule anywhere that I know of stating this, no First-teenth Amendment to the Literary Constitution, but there might as well be: you get one national poet.

Literary works are not democracies. We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal. We may, but the country of Novels, Etc., doesn't. In that faraway place, no character is created equal. One or two of them get all the breaks; the rest exist to get them to the finish line.

Those stories- myth, archetype, religious narrative, the great body of literature- are always with us. Always in us. We can draw upon them, tap into them, add to them whenever we want.

Reading is a full contact sport; we crash up against the wave of words with all of our intellectual, imaginative, and emotional resources. What results can sometimes be as much our creation as the novelist's or playwright's.

Much of what we think about literature, we feel first.

reading is an activity of the imagination, and the imagination in question is not the writer's alone.

Literature has its own logic; it is not life. Not only that, but (and this is key): characters are not people... and we forget that at our peril.

Different: no guilty party exists in the narrative (unless you count the author, who is present everywhere and nowhere).

Own the books you read. Also poems, stories, flash fiction, plays, memoirs, movies, creative nonfiction, and all the rest. ... take ownership of your reading. It's yours. It's special. It is exactly like nobody else's in the whole world.

Your reading should be fun. We only call them literary works. Really, though, it's all a form of play. So play, Dear Reader, play. And fare thee well.

Writing well is the best revenge.

Well, they may not be civilized, but they certainly are confident—and this confidence is one of the open-handed pleasures of early Irish literature.

Nous vivons la période de la mort de la mort de l'auteur.

A novel is an impression, not an argument.

A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest.

My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.

December morning—sunny and exceedingly mild—might have regarded Gabriel

The truth is, that I never care much for reading what one ought to read; I wish I did, but I cannot help it.  And

He read whenever he could as he walked to and from his work.

Why didn't you tell me there was danger in men-folk? Why didn't you warn me? Ladies know what to fend hands against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the chance o' learning in that way, and you did not help me!