Quotes About Literature

I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.

Live always in the best company when you read.

I couldn't keep a dog and a James Joyce and a bookshop.

I think you will come to Balzac yet. When one has disproved all one's theories, outgrown all of one's standards, discarded all one's criterions, and left off minding about one's appearance, one comes to Balzac. And there he is, waiting outside his canvas tent—with such a circus going on inside.

Still reading, Miss St John? You read a lot, don't you? - It saves me from conversation.

I suppose some editors are failed writers - but so are most writers.

I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics.

Someone said, "The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did." Precisely, and they are that which we know.

The general point of view may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.

And I came to understand, in a way I never had before, that books are truly the stuff of miracles. I even dared to dream that someday, somehow, I might surround myself with books from many times and many tongues...

Books. Cats. Life is good.

I have done my plowing:I have sown my seed.Again I have time to sit and read my books.

Books are a form of magic—" the doctor lifted the volume he had just laid on the stack, "—because they span time and distance more surely than any spell or charm.

Yes, I am confusing literature with life. I'm declaring my own ordinary life to be a work of literature.

I'm not addicted to reading. I can quit as soon as I finish the next chapter.

There have been only two geniuses in the world. Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.

I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education.

There have only been two geniuses in the world — Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.

I read a lot. I always have, but in those two years I gorged myself on books with a voluptuous, almost erotic gluttony. I would go to the local library and take out as many as I could, and then lock myself in the bedsit and read solidly for a week. I went for old books, the older the better--Tolstoy, Poe, Jacobean tragedies, a dusty translation of Laclos--so that when I finally resurfaced, blinking and dazzled, it took me days to stop thinking in their cool, polished, crystalline rhythms.

The squealing little arse-gerbil.

She was doing a PhD in English literature,' I pointed out. 'I know zip about English literature, Frank. I got an A in my Leaving Cert, but that's it. I don't speak the jargon.

If they had said my writing wasn't good enough, fair enough, that's an opinion. But to say it's too complex is to insult the intelligence of the so-called young.