Quotes About Literature

Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony.

My God, the corruptions of literature. It put all these notions into our heads.

Reading Dostoyevsky is like sitting in the front row of a theater, where the actors' spit lands on your face.

Nabokov once said that the price of being a writer was sleepless nights. But, Nabokov added slyly, if the writer doesn't have sleepless nights, how can he hope to cause sleepless nights in anyone else?

Literature is not an instruction manual. For obvious reasons, this is rarely noted in fiction.

Do you read, Mr. Quinn?" he asked. "Everybody should read something. Otherwise we all fall down into the pit of ignorance. Many are down there. Some people fall in it forever. Their lives mean nothing. They should not exist.

Books are cold," declared Arthur Merwyn. They "allow no questions, offer no explanations... They talk to us behind a screen. Their tone is lifeless and monotonous. They charm not our attention by mute significances of gesture and look.

That writer does the most, who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time.

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led,They damn those authors whom they never read.

That aura brought his works on Eurasianism massive popularity at a time when there was a hunger for dissident literature, and when any suppressed works automatically gained a reputation for authenticity and truth. He

He believed in the unarguable notion that if a young person is lucky enough to read the right books at the right time in the company of the right teacher, it will change their life forever.

A word love has made a thousand books. (Un mot amour A fait mille livres.)

I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage.

Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on Boxin' Day.

A demd, damp, moist, unpleasant body!

You are in every line I have ever read.

You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since-on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with.

In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected." ( Frauds on the Fairies , 1853)

These books were a way of escaping from the unhappiness of my life.

You have been in every line I have ever read.

and he glanced at the backs of the books, with an awakened curiosity that went below the binding. No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.

Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then.