Quotes About Literature

serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books.

When Dr. Samuel Johnson had completed the first real dictionary of the English language, he was visited by a delegation of respectable old ladies who wished to congratulate him for not including any indecent words. His response - which was that he was interested to see that the ladies had been looking them up - contains almost all that needs to be said on this point.

If something is worth bearing or listening to, it's very probably worth reading. So, this above all: Find your own voice.

These books have not made George nobler or better or more truly wise. It is just that he likes listening to their voices, the one or the other, according to his mood.

I'm afraid, ha, ha, I find more inspiration in the Marquis de Sade.

From 1929 to 1933, [age 25-29] I lived almost continuously in Berlin, with only occasional visits to other parts of Germany and to England. Already, during that time, I had made up my mind that I would one day write about the people I'd met and the experiences I was having. So I kept a detailed diary, which in due course provided raw material for all my Berlin stories. [from preface]

Sometimes Arthur talked about his childhood. As a boy he was delicate and had never been sent to school. An only son, he lived alone with his widowed mother, whom me adored. Together they studied literature and art; together they visted Paris, Baden-Baden, Rome, moving always in the best society, from Schloss to château, from château to palace, gentle, charming, appreciative; in a state of perpeutal tender anxiety about each other's health.

A book can't read itself to you. It doesn't even know what it's about.

It is well known that great art, great music and great literature can emerge out of great pain. This does not lessen the reality of the suffering of the artist, composer or writer, but it points to something creative and redemptive in the human person, made in the image of God, which can bring forth a thing of beauty in the midst of surrounding ugliness, brutality and evil. Nowhere is this more true than in the book of Lamentations.

He was a writer and words were his weapons.

If you like what you're reading, I probably wrote it.

My children are monsters, Kiro thought. And I am responsible. Perhaps if I had read them the haikus of Basho when they were little instead of that American manifesto of high-pressure sales, Green Eggs and Ham...

Amy called the whale punkin.

Flood legó al mundo una estela de libros magníficos y de corazones rotos, y aunque es bien sabido que el amor de su vida fue también su perdición, nunca se arrepintió de ello, como demuestra su discurso de aceptación del premio Nobel: «He seguido a mi pene al infierno y he vuelto para contarlo».

Die Behauptung, daß Effrom nicht besonders gut kochen konnte, war eine Untertreibung von ähnlichem Kaliber wie die Feststellung, daß es sich bei Völkermord um eine nicht besonders erfolgversprechende PR-Strategie handele.

I own a book,' he thought, delighted (Paolini 291).

I'm afraid I've degenerated into a bibliophile.

Christopher Paolini

Not anymore. I'm afraid I've degenerated into a bibliophile. A what? asked Eragon. One who loves books, explained Jeod.

It got so that when he closed his eyes, letters and words danced in his mind. He thought of little else during that time.

books should go where they will be most appreciated, not sit unread, gathering dust on a foreign shelf, don't you agree?

These books are my friends, my companions.

Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf

And Arya! He cringed