Quotes About Literature

[B]ut in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own.

Book lovers never go to bed alone.

she has books in her lap and ideas in her head she has colorful dreams when she reads in bed

A dirty book is rarely dusty.

That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.

How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.

I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place

Wie tief im Menschen leben jede jener Fabeln: wurzelt, auf welche die großen alten Werke gebaut sind.

the roasted-paper smell of very old books, and the seared ink of photocopied pages.

I'm a lousy writer; a helluva lot of people have got lousy taste.

I checked out the two Edith Wharton books I had just returned because I'd read them so long ago and they are more apropos now than ever. They were The House of Mirth and The Children, which is about how life in the United States in New York changed in twenty-seven years fifty years ago. ("Wants")

Las mujeres han comprado libros escritos por hombres desde siempre, y se dieron cuenta de que no eran acerca de ellas. Pero continuaron haciéndolo con gran interés porque era como leer acerca de un país extranjero. Los hombres nunca han devuelto la cortesía".

Los libros pertenecen a la vez a varios campos. La literatura, en sí misma, pertenece al orden del arte en general que, por supuesto, es muy complejo, y, yendo hacia lo más sencillo, al orden primario del juego, como el trapo que se vuelve muñeca, como el palo de escoba que hace de caballo.

ALLEGORY IS STILL a contentious aspect of gay writing. To read a work of literature as an expression of heterosexual desire is literary criticism; to read it as an expression of homosexual desire is 'appropriation' or 'prurience'. Associating it with something in one's own love life is either 'conscripting a writer for the cause' (gay) or 'demonstrating its universal relevance' (straight).

People read books, didn't they, to get away from themselves, to escape the troubles of their lives?

It is almost impossible to get a novel printed in an English journal unless it is warranted to contain nothing at all to which anybody, however narrow, could possibly object, on any ground whatever, religious, political, social, moral or aesthetic. The romance that appeals to your average editor must say or hint at nothing at all which is not universally believed and received by everybody, everywhere in this realm of Britain.

There are times when it's worth putting aside the endless myopic navel-gazing that occupies so much literature in order to look out at the universe itself and value it for what it is

Because most of the girls were still in mourning and all of them had lost their textbooks, even pencils and pens, Shaukat Ali began the first classes by reading to them from poetry and religious texts. "Reading, literature, and spirituality are good for the soul," he told them. "So we will start with these studies.

I only read books if Voltaire's cock has been dipped in red ink and rolled over the cover.

He left a quote I need—" "A quotation, Mr. Marlow. 'Quote' is a verb. 'Quotation' is a noun.

Books fall open, you fall in. When you climb out again, you're a bit larger than you used to be.

If my love to you can't be said in a posy, it can't be said in a library.

From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

I'll put off reading Lolita for six more years until she turns 18.