Quotes About Literature

in order to write good English one should be familiar with the Bible as well as European fairy tales, nursery rhymes and even nonsense verse like the limericks of Edward Lear. I read them not for fun but as the basics of literature.

To read all these stories and more, you will have to wait till I am dead and a suicidal publisher decides to print them.

sought out his company because he was one of the most erudite Indian writers I had met. He also had a phenomenal memory.

Does Carthage even have forests? Did Virgil know for sure or was it just convenient for his story? Virgil was a professional liar. This would not be the only place where he pruned the truth until it was as artificial as an espaliered pear tree against a wall, forced into an expedient shape and bearing the demanded fruit.

Of course it happened. If I wrote something that hadn't really happened, and I tried to sell it, I could go to jail. That's fraud.

Literature...I'm gonna study books - the way they're written and what the author meant to say by writing the story. When I'm done, I want to get a job in a library.

The Nazis are trying to control what we can read." Madame Marcelle shook her head. "It's much worse than that," she said. "Controlling the newspaper makes sense in an occupied land. Novels and works of literature are art in the same way that songs are art. It's wrong to burn them. It's wrong to ban them.

While the spoken word can travel faster, you can't take it home in your hand. Only the written word can be absorbed wholly at the convenience of the reader.

Doesn't it make you feel safe to know you have enough to read? If I didn't always have a book waiting, I'd panic.

I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and, more especially, from her lyrics of the last generation.

Any writer, in whatever form, must first pass through the stage of being a reader. It is unimaginable that someone could become a writer without first being a reader. Only a daydreamer who had fallen into an unhealthy idealism could exoticize a writer in this way. Such misperception is similar to believing that thought is possible without language.

a lot of books to read but time is limited

Voor een schrijver is het geheugen bijna alles. Het opgespaarde materiaal wordt er niet alleen maar opgeslagen. Het meest waardevolle wordt er als in een toverzeef achtergehouden. Stof en molm vallen erdoor en worden door de wind weggevoerd en slechts het goudzand blijft achter. En daarmee worden dan kunstwerken gemaakt.

A regénykönyvek már nem mulattatnak, mert magam szebbeket tudok elgondolni.

There is massive evidence that self-selected reading, or reading what you want to read, is responsible for most of our literacy development. Readers have better reading ability, know more vocabulary, write better, spell better, and have better control of complex grammatical constructions. In fact, it is impossible to develop high levels of literacy without being a dedicated reader, and dedicated readers rarely have serious problems in reading and writing.

My idea of outdoor activity is taking my book outside

He was not Monica's biological child, and all the research said that no matter how good a mom she was, she would never be enough. Fathers didn't seem to be so accused in the literature.

Books + friendship = book club

Samwise Gamgee would never leave Frodo like this. No hero would ever do this. But books were only a reflection of real life, not the thing itself.

obsession with method is one of the baleful aspects of modern literary theory, and it has not served society well in promoting the reading or writing of literature. Nevertheless,

One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.

We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough.

Of course the play as I wrote it amounted to nothing; but in weaving the plot through successive scenes, and in writing out some of the dialogues, I enjoyed the full bliss of literary creation. Never to have tasted this delight is never to have known one of the greatest joys of life.

Today there is a strong smell of blood in the air. Literary anti-Semitism forges the moral weapon for murder. Sturdy and honest lads will take care of the rest.