Quotes About Literature

Discovering dedicated mystery booksellers was a bit like going to heaven without having to die first

It's your fault because you got me into Morag Fraser. I'd never even heard of the Hebridean Harpies series till you dragged me along to her event. And now I am totally hooked. I was reading Vampires on Vatersay till one in the morning. I just had to finish it. And then I started Banshees of Berneray at breakfast and I could hardly drag myself away from it to come and meet you.

Ruth Rendell, Reginald Hill, P.D. James, Ernest Tidyman, John Le Carré, Norman Mailer, Penelope Fitzgerald and Colin Dexter all transported

But also, surprisingly, Charles Willeford, Ken Bruen and James Sallis.

As he often did, he remembered reading the opening of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, where Philip Marlowe itemises his smartest outfit then observes, 'I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

Literary fairy tales tell of 'difficult' conditions which are an essential element in forming any friendship, but such conditions are simply not difficult enough.

Karasik, Natasja – verlegen

He was fond of books, for they are cool and sure friends

He loved books; books are cold but safe friends.

England has two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare,but the Bible made England.

It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.

He loved books, those undemanding but faithful friends.

Books are cold but safe friends.

On ne lit pas impunément des niaiseries

Les livres sont des amis froids et sûrs.

He never went out without a book under his arm and he often came home with two.

He had a small but well stocked library. He loved books; books are a remote but reliable friend.

Machiavelli is not an evil genius, nor a demon, nor a miserable and cowardly writer; he is nothing but the fact. And he is not only the Italian fact; he is the European fact, the fact of the sixteenth century. He seems hideous, and so he is, in the presence of the moral idea of the nineteenth.

He loved books; books are cold but safe friends. In

Far be it from me to insult the pun! I honor it in proportion to its merits; nothing more. All the most august, the most sublime, the most charming of humanity, and perhaps outside of humanity, have made puns.

With Cosette's garter, Homer would make the Iliad. He would put into his poem an old babbler like me, and he would call him Nestor.

It is the accursed inventions of this century that are ruining everything--artilleries, bombards, and, above all, printing, that other German pest. No more manuscripts, no more books! printing will kill bookselling. It is the end of the world that is drawing nigh.

Le livre, comme livre, appartient à l'auteur, mais comme pensée, il appartient -le mot n'est pas trop vaste- au genre humain. Toutes les intelligences y ont droit. Si l'un des deux droits, le droit de l'écrivain et le droit de l'esprit humain, devait être sacrifié, ce serait, certes, le droit de l'écrivain, car l'intérêt public est notre préoccupation unique, et tous, je le déclare, doivent passer avant nous.

En France, que de gens à longues oreilles : ânes en littérature, lièvres en politique !