Quotes About Literature

But don't you think there are larger issues the author is trying to explore?' 'Yes, but they shouldn't be given primacy over or even separated from the experience of the story itself.

talking about characters in books is exciting and soothing to me at the same time.

We always sound confident when we're talking about the other person's book.

How does a man in Mississippi in the 1920s create a character who feels more alive to a waitress in 1997, remembered with more tenderness, than most of the boys she's ever known? How do you create a character like that?

Anyone who reads a book with a sense of obligation does not understand the art of reading.

I regard the discovery of one's favorite author as the most critical event in one's intellectual development.

There is no proper time and place for reading. When the mood for reading comes, one can read anywhere

And if the reader has no taste for what he reads, all the time is wasted

We sat in his library. amidst his beloved books, whose company I knew he would rather seek than that of most of his acquaintances, did they but know it.

I don't remember exactly when books became my refuge, but it was in the pages of a world created out of thin air that I began to find pieces I recognized as myself.

a type I would never have met, only read about in books, for books were where you found life, without the effort of being in the real world.

The glory of the library for me is how many of the books are in poor physical condition. They are books that have been read and read intensely. They are knocked about and shopworn. I would be ashamed of a book whose spine was not broken.

You cannot have a taste for minimalist décor if you seriously read books.

Who destroys books? Cities, churches, dictators and fanatics. Their fingers itch to build a pyre and strike the match. On 10 May 1933, students gathered in Berlin to dance around a bonfire of 25,000 volumes of 'un-German' books. They burned, amongst many others, Bertolt Brecht, Otto Dix, Heinrich Heine, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce and H.G. Wells. They destroyed them because the contents were too dangerous.

Reading wasn't my religion – it was my oxygen.

Lord Malquist and Mr Moon was the literary equivalent of the Wonderbra for intellectually pretentious students of the seventies.

Books are too personal as objects to be displayed, in case a potential buyer is put off by your taste for Nietzsche or Marian Keyes. You would not display the contents of your knicker and sock drawer, or your bathroom cabinet with its face creams and cough remedies, so why put off potential buyers with your taste in literature?

When I was young, boys invited in for sex would examine your bookshelves.

Mon livre, pour exister, avait mangé d'autres livres.

Il y a des écrivains qui réunissent cent mille personnes à leur enterrement et il y a ceux qui n'ont jamais suscité la ferveur que d'une poignée de passeurs, confrérie clandestine dont les membres se transmettent le flambeau d'une génération à l'autre. (p. 143)

Nothing can quite take the place of reading a good book out loud together. It can be calming, comforting, and inspiring. It is a powerful opportunity to bond and share in the delight of a good story.

It is s shame that more people do not appreciate the value of "a good read". I was fortunate enough to have had elementary school teachers who would read to us while we were to put our heads down on the desk and visualize the story and characters. It set me up for a lifetime of enjoying reading....

Men recorded their experiences and called it history; men looked about the world and called their observations science; men wondered about the existence of God and the problem of evil and called their speculations theology; men did handiwork and called it art; men made up stories, wrote them down and called them literature; men thought about such topics as truth, beauty, justice, and the nature of existence and called their opinions philosophy.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a book. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in a book.