Quotes About Literature

Seriously, I do not know what to say of this book [ Absalom, Absalom!] except that it seem to point to the final blowup of what was once a remarkable, if minor, talent… this is a penny dreadful tricked up in fancy language and given a specious depth by the expert manipulation of a series of eccentric technical tricks. The characters have no magnitude and no meaning because they have no more reality than a mince-pie nightmare.

People who believe in The Truth often read one book or a group of books all their lives. For them the last word has been uttered by, say, Thomas Aquinas or Adolf Hitler or Friedrich Nietzsche. Hence they stick to their particular Bible and wear it to shreds. Such readers are almost always psychopaths. A one-book man is a dangerous man and should be taken in hand and taught how to diversify his literary investments.

Philosophers are divided on the question of whether the narrative therein unfolded [the Crossman Diaries] is grippingly boring or boringly gripping.

Orpheus, with immaculately cut pleated trousers instead of a toga, was played by Jean Marais, Cocteau's young lover. The leading actress, Maria Casares, was Albert Camus's mistress.

have been at a great feast of languages," says Moth, "and stolen the scraps.")

We shouldn't call a critic a murderer just because it is his duty to sign death certificates. —MARCEL REICH-RANICKI, DIE ANWALTE DER LITERATUR,

How well he's read, to reason against reading!

and he wrote the single most famous poem about the death camps, "Todesfuge" (Death Fugue).

It has to be remembered that the typical Polish writer was Bruno Schulz.

But for that to be remembered, Bruno Schulz has to be remembered,

Her novels, which I have not yet read, are usually described as the work of a writer's writer, or perhaps of someone who has been to the Institute for the Theory of Literature in Zagreb.

His advocacy and understanding of Victor Hugo led to a close friendship,

It was being published, even after his death, that brought Franz Kafka alive: otherwise he would have been just a man who got nowhere with women.

Riled by pedantic reviewers in search of a solecism, Proust said that there was no correctness this side of originality.

I have found the title of the book as impossible to forget as the poems in it were impossible to remember.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

If a novelist were so uncouth and possessed of so little moral sense that he should write of illicit love, his book would be barred from the public libraries and he woukd be ostracized by society.

She feels "Brutal Dynasty" actually may become the Great American Novel she and her fellow critics have been looking for so long.

If you don't like a book, you can close it. But you have no right to say I can't open it.

People who are perfectly sane and happy don't make good literature, alas.

My life will not be significantly impoverished if I never see another Shakespearian comedy.

Walking along the avenues, we had one of the so-called intellectual conversations, which consist a great deal in quoting names of books and authors.

Jakie spo?ecze?stwo, taka literatura. (how society is, such is literature)

The English public doesn't really like Shakespeare; it prefers football.