Quotes About Literature

I HAVE already hinted that the dainty, squeamish, and fastidious taste acquired by a surfeit of idle reading, had not only rendered our hero unfit for serious and sober study, but had even disgusted him in some degree with that in which he had hitherto indulged. He

Nor did I forget what is the natural pleasure of every man who has been a reader;… filling the shelves of a tolerably large library.

The books, always the books. And for themselves, not to become rich or famous like sensible people. Are we not foolish? But it is a pleasant folly and a sometimes blameless vice

Reading could be the BEST addiction one could have. The only proven side effect is imagination & an edge in knowledge.

If contemporary literary fiction doesn't read a bit like science fiction then it's probably not all that contemporary, is it

We may exhort ourselves to read tolerantly, we may quote Coleridge on the willing suspension of disbelief until we think ourselves totally suspended in a relativistic universe, and still we will find many books which postulate readers we refuse to become, books that depend on 'beliefs' or 'attitudes'...which we cannot adopt even hypothetically as our own.

the author's judgment is always present, always evident to anyone who knows how to look for it. Whether its particular forms are harmful or serviceable is always a complex question, a question that cannot be settled by any easy reference to abstract rules. As we begin now to deal with this question, we must never forget that though the author can to some extent choose his disguises, he can never choose to disappear.

no place is more filled with imagined voices than a library.

Our lives are greatly enriched when we immerse ourselves in literature and spiritual writing, not because we are going to be tested but purely for the sake of enrichment.

You told us over and over that you don't think you could live without books, but the ironic thing is, you'd probably die before you'd think to rip pages out of one to start a fire. Am I right? Well, get over it already. Better to be warm then well-read.

If you can read and have more imagination than a doorknob, what need do you have for a 'movie version' of a novel?

I'd had the idea, once, that if I could get the chance before I died I would read all the good books there were. Now I began to see that I wasn't apt to make it. This disappointed me, for I really wanted to read them all.

One of the strongest of contemporary conventions is that of comparing to Thoreau every writer who has been as far out of the house as the mailbox.

To Kill a Mockingbird would become like Catch-22, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, On the Road, Soul on Ice, and The Feminine Mystique—books that seized the imagination of the post–World War II generation

Also during their honeymoon, Jane shared with him a gift from her favorite professor at Swarthmore, Henry Goddard, chair of the English Department. For every student, Goddard wrote a phrase from literature on a slip of paper, put it inside a walnut shell, and presented it at the end of the semester. For Jane, he had selected a sentence from Dostoyevsky: "One sacred memory from childhood is perhaps the best education." Kurt referred to it for years as inspiration and solace.

took down The Great Gatsby and ran his finger over the fine green binding. "There's no such thing," he said aloud, "as a flawless novel. But if there is, this is it.

Don't be fooled by what the Sunday reviewers say of the jazz-age, Saturday-Evening-Post-popularity, et cetera. People will be going back to Fitzgerald one day as they now go back to Henry James.

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message from the dead - from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.

I believe that writing is derivative. I think good writing comes from good reading.

[Of Coleridge:] An archangel a little damaged.

I love to lose myself in other men's minds.... Books think for me.

I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading, I cannot sit and think. Books think for me

There is absolutely no such thing as reading but by a candle. We have tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, and in sultry arbours, but it was labor thrown away. Those gay motes in the beam come about you, hovering and teasing, like so many coquets, that will have you all to their self, and are jealous of your abstractions. By the midnight taper, the writers digests his meditations. By the same light we must approach to their perusal, if we would catch the flame, the odour.

I counsel thee, shut not thy heart nor thy library