Quotes About Literature

There is a good saying to the effect that when a new book appears one should read an old one.

Later these tales would be retold and embellished by the genius of Mallory, Spenser, and Tennyson.

Old words, he said, were the best of all, and he indulged in them: correctitude, palimpsest, parlementaire, guttersnipe, purblind.

Woolf wanted to say dangerous things in Orlando but she did not want to say them in the missionary position.

So poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their "oeuvres." I

Leggere libri è il gioco più bello che l'umanità abbia inventato.

Such stories may predominate in daily life, but when literature starts taking cues from statistics, it seals its own fate.

Literatura powa?na nie jest po to, ?eby u?atwia? ?ycie, tylko ?eby je utrudnia?.

Koniec i bomba, a kto czyta? ten tr?ba!

My literature must remain that which it is. Especially that something which does not fit into politics and does not want to serve it. I cultivate just one politics: my own. I am a separate state.

Nauczyciele, wychowawcy, kierownicy duchowi? W istocie, oni nauczyli czytelnika polskiego tej prawdy o literaturze, ?e ona jest czymÅ› w rodzaju szkolnych wypracowaÅ", pisanych po to aby belfer mógÅ' postawi? stopieÅ" [...] SÄ… to mistrzowie trywializacji, artyÅ›ci w przemienianiu ostrego ?ycia w nudnÄ… papkÄ™, gdzie wszystko jest mnie wiÄ™cej równie mierne i niewa?ne.

By?em kiedy? obecny przy dyskusji Kotta - czy nie z Breiterem? - na temat co chcia? powiedzie? X w swoim ostatnim utworze. Ciskali w siebie cytatami. Zaproponowa?em, ?eby go zapytali przez telefon i nawet da?em im numer. Zamilkli, a po chwili zacz?li rozmawia? o czym innym - gdy problem zosta? zredukowany do telefonicznego pytania, przesta? ich interesowa?.

It seems to me that here, accidentally, I have betrayed the greatest and ultimate secret of style: we have to know how to delight in the word. If literature generally dares to speak, it is not at all because it is certain of its truth, but only because it is certain of its delight.

I can say without exaggeration that I "devoted myself" to literature. For me, literature is not a matter of a career and future monuments but the excavating from myself of the maximum value of which I am capable. If it were to turn out that that which I write is inconsequential, then I am defeated not only as a writer but as a man.

More wisdom is contained in the best crime fiction than in philosophy.

Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress truth.

Wir brauchen keine Dichter mit guter Grammatik. Zu guter Grammatik fehlt uns Geduld.

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

I read in self-defense.

Just don't take any class where you have to read BEOWULF.

We laughed over it, and Hemingway punched me in the mouth.

Marshall McLuhan predicted books would become art objects at some point. He was right.

I read 'War and Peace' in 20 minutes," he says. "It's about Russia.

Leggo per legittima difesa.