Quotes About Literature

Sartre said that wars were acts and that, with literature, you could produce changes in history. Now, I don't think literature doesn't produce changes, but I think the social and political effect of literature is much less controllable than I thought.

There is not now, nor I suspect will there ever be, a le Carre novel with ninjas in it. Most serious novelists are wary of including ninjas in their writing. That's a shame, because many much-admired works of modern fiction could benefit from a few.

I am generally wary of the demand for 'likeability' in fiction, which I think is a bastardisation of the demand of identification - itself something of a suspect notion.

No one seems to wash in Middle-earth.

My interest in words and literature is always changing. And every day of work is different, and it doesn't feel laborious in the way that, say, washing dishes did. I'm quite happy to be doing what I'm doing, and I feel very lucky.

When the Supreme Court moved to Washington in 1800, it was provided with no books, which probably accounts for the high quality of early opinions.

Harper lifted the book without looking at Flann. "Reading here." Flannery craned her neck. "The Case of the Missing Girlfriend.

She hadn't been born into this world, but she'd been born with the love of words and and she'd found her home.

Wake up Smarter. Sleep With a Librarian.

I still like to write, but I mostly dabble for my own enjoyment. I discovered I'm very happy surrounded by books written by other people—and the readers who love them.

Mind being the seat of the soul, and literature being the expression of the mind, literature, it follows, is the soul of an age, the surviving and immortal part of it; and

I'm willing to keep an open mind about the existence of God or whether or not Joye's Ulysses is a great novel, but I have no doubt that one way or another child molesters are nurtured, not born.

Our assessment of reading may begin with standardized test scores, but in the end we must measure a child's reading ability by the amount of laughter exhaled and tears shed as the written word is devoured.

Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.

My dad wanted to name me after Rainier Maria Rilke, the poet.

Iqbal, using Urdu and also Persian, would be the poet of Islam rather than of India.

Writing is merely public speaking on paper, but to a much larger audience.

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

Keys to Great Writing by Stephen Wilbers

Animal Farm has seen off all the opposition. It's as valid today as it was fifty years ago.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

Expediency of literature, reason of literature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is questioned; much is to say on both sides, and, while the fight waxes hot, thou, dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hour, and between whiles add a line.

A man's library is a sort of harem.

Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar's dinner, from a hundred charities?