Quotes About Literature

If we are inspired only by literature that reflects our own interests, all reading becomes a form of narcissism.

The most common mistake students of literature make is to go straight for what the poem or novel says, setting aside the way that it says it. To read like this is to set aside the 'literariness' of the work – the fact that it is a poem or play or novel, rather than an account of the incidence of soil erosion in Nebraska.

appetite of the blank page for ever more information, ever more data. An empty book is a greedy thing.

world of elliptical allusions and allegory. And a lot of what they wrote was designed

If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.

It cannot be said often enough that science fiction as a genre is incredibly educational - and I'm speaking the written science fiction, not 'Star Trek.' Science fiction writers tend to fill their books if they're clever with little bits of interesting stuff and real stuff.

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character there was nothing particularly new about this - death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

The most watched programme on the BBC, after the news, is probably 'Doctor Who.' What has happened is that science fiction has been subsumed into modern literature. There are grandparents out there who speak Klingon, who are quite capable of holding down a job. No one would think twice now about a parallel universe.

If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.

There is no such thing as music note by note just as there is no such thing as a book word by word. We have to accept that things are ambiguous," Sebök said to one of the students on the last day of the master class. Is there any more fundamental lesson that we must learn as we mature? As my friend had told me, he might have been talking about all of life, not just music.

Before I Talk, I Should Read A Book

For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.

It is Proust's courtesy to spare the reader the embarrassment of believing himself cleverer than the author.

Read a lot. But read as a writer, to see how other writers are doing it. And make your knowledge of literature in English as deep and broad as you can. In workshops, writers are often told to read what is being written now, but if that is all you read, you are limiting yourself. You need to get a good overall sense of English literary history, so you can write out of that knowledge.

every psychic defence mechanism known to the modern psychologist makes its appearance somewhere in Shakespeare.

Only a man with a heart of stone could read of the death of Little Nell without laughing.' Oscar Wilde

Carrie felt this as a personal reproof. She read "Dora Thorne," or had a great deal in the past. It seemed only fair to her, but she supposed that people thought it very fine. Now this clear- eyed, fine-headed youth, who looked something like a student to her, made fun of it. It was poor to him, not worth reading. She looked down, and for the first time felt the pain of not understanding.

Children's reading and children's thinking are the rock-bottom base upon which this country will rise. Or not rise. In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that books for children have a greater potential for good or evil than any other form of literature on earth.

I am old-fashioned, or sentimental, or something, about books! Whenever I read one I want, in the first place, to enjoy myself, and, in the next place, to feel that I am a little better and not a little worse for having read it. It

Now and then I am asked as to 'what books a statesman should read,' and my answer is, poetry and novels – including short stories under the head of novels.

I am a part of everything I have read

I wrote the very first stories in science fiction which dealt with homosexuality, The World Well Lost and Affair With a Green Monkey.

literature must always be about gloom of one sort or another, on the principal that there is nothing interesting to be said about happy people.

I have chosen to write about women, because I am not one myself, and because I have always preferred to write about subjects which do not tempt me to be so arrogant as to believe that I can ever fully understand them, but above all because many women seem to me to be looking at life with fresh eyes, and their autobiographies, in various forms, are the most original part of contemporary literature