Quotes About Literature

Readers call Tolstoy a giant not because other writers are dwarfs but because he remains always of exactly our own stature,† exactly keeping pace with us instead of passing by in the distance, as other authors do.

The whole history of literary fiction as an evolutionary process may be said to be a gradual probing of deeper and deeper layers of life.

Literature is not a pattern of ideas but a pattern of images. Ideas do not matter much in comparison to a book's imagery and magic. The word, the expression, the image is the true function of literature. Not ideas.

Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita. Repeat till the page is full, printer.

L'estil i l'estructura són l'essència d'un bon llibre; les grans idees són estupideses. El estilo y la estructura son a esencia de un buen libro; las grandes ideas son estupideces

the book like a sleigh left my lap...

The truth is that great novels are great fairy tales... literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him.

Para mí, una obra e ficción sólo existe en la medida en que me proporciona lo que llamaré lisa y llanamente placer estético, es decir, la sensación de que es algo, en algún lugar, relacionado con otros estados de ser en que el arte (curiosidad, ternura, bondad, éxtasis) es la norma.

We shall do our best to avoid the factual error of looking for so-called real life in novels. Let us not try and reconcile the fictions of facts with the facts of fiction. ... A master piece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.

We shall do our best to avoid the factual error of looking for so-called real life in novels. Let us not try and reconcile the fiction of facts with the facts of fiction. ... A master piece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.

Every great writer is a great deceiver

The Russian reader in old cultured Russia was certainly proud of Pushkin and of Gogol, but he was just as proud of Shakespeare or Dante, of Baudelaire or of Edgar Allan Poe, of Flaubert or of Homer, and this was the Russian reader's strength. I have a certain personal interest in the question, for if my fathers had not been good readers, I would hardly be here today, speaking of these matters in this tongue.

Martin was one of those people for whom a good book before sleep is something to look forward to all day. Such a person, upon happening to recall, amidst routine occupations, that on his bedside table a book is waiting for him, in perfect safety, feels a surge of inexpressible happiness.

Zij verslindt boeken, jaar in jaar uit zonder ooit toe te staan dat een boek haar verslindt. Zij leest niet om de dingen beter te begrijpen, maar om ze op afstand te houden. Een boek, dat is een haardscherm tussen haar en de rest van de wereld.

Then it was that books began to happen to me, and I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas.

As for reading books, even far-out books, even beatnik books, fine. Only there are not enough books for me down South, which is one reason I came to New York.

She turned to him, her cheeks burning red. "What is this? Vampire porn?" "Yep." "Oh, and this is a good one. Muffy the Vampire Layer.

I told him. We got a library here. Got plenty of good books, too. -Larry Brown, Dirty Work

Hawkeye: I brought a book over. Roberts: What book? Hawkeye: The dictionary. I figure it's got all the other books in it.

Social media is a time-suck. Read a friggin' book once in a while.

NED: I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E. M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, john Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjöld . . . These are not invisible men.

Post-Modernism was a reaction against Modernism. It came quite early to music and literature, and a little later to architecture. And I think it's still coming to computer science.

The criterion for a book of worth is: does it make you think more, W. says.

I've always been a bookworm. As I mentioned, I moved around a lot, and one of the problems with being the new kid is it takes a while to make new friends. But I always had my books.