Quotes About Literature

Could life get any worse? She had read that great literature often comes out of great tragedy. If that was true, well, Shakespeare better move over.

Mr. Kosinski won the National Book Award for Steps

One of them replied that they had come to punish Kosinski for The Painted Bird, a book that vilified their country and ridiculed their people.

He laughed, but his face was unreadable as he looked at her titles. "Ah, a collection from Sir Walter Scott. Very nice, I've always liked his poetry. Sense and Sensibility, but surely you have read this one." She nodded after a moment. "Y-Yes. It is one of my favorites. I only rather liked this binding." He held his gaze on her for a moment and then nodded.

The Kiowa didn't scalp, and the real Mescalero did not live in pueblos, but factual accuracy, for May, was something that happened to other writers).

Hallblithe was created by William Morris and appeared in The Story of the Glittering Plain Which Has Also Been Called the

Mr. Gespenst was created by E.E. Kellett and appeared in "The Tables Turned" (Pearson's Magazine, January 1903). Ernest Edward Kellett (1864-1950) wrote widely on subjects from literature to music to religion. He also created Nameless Man (VI). "The Tables Turned" is an amusing comic ghost story.

Like, you just did not expect to feel this way but you do, and it's what writers for centuries have called "melancholia" but because you don't read books, your language is limited.

I've read countless literary works that detail the longing and ache that characters have for someone they love, and over time, I have developed a strong belief that it's just dramatic bullshit meant to entice readers.

The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace. Style and personality are irrelevant. They can be formal or casual. They can be tall or short or fat or thin. They can obey the rules or break them. But they need to contain a charge. A live current, which shocks and illuminates.

It's a sort of literary act of survival. I don't have many words to express myself--rather, the opposite. I'm aware of a state of deprivation. And yet, at the same time, I feel free, light. I rediscover the reason that I write, the joy as well as the need.

The Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol. "For Gogol Ganguli," it says on the front endpaper in his father's tranquil hand, in red ballpoint ink, the letters rising gradually, optimistically, on the diagonal toward the upper right-hand corner of the page. "The man who gave you his name, from the man who gave you your name" is written within quotation marks.

She prefers books to jewels and saris. She believes as I do.

I believe that reading in a foreign language is the most intimate way of reading.

It usually sits on the night table, so that I can easily look up an unknown word while I'm reading. This book allows me to read other books, to open the door of a new language. It accompanies me, even now, when I go on vacation, on trips. It has become a necessity. If, when I leave, I forget to take it with me, I feel slightly uneasy, as if I'd forgotten my toothbrush or a change of socks.

Cammino sulla superficie, la parte accesibile. Ma so, da scrittrice, che una lingua esiste nelle ossa, nel midollo. Che la vera vita della lingua, la sostanza è lì.

he wanted to relive those confused days, that life of discovery, to be bound to those round tables and lectures and exams. There were things he had always meant to understand better [...] He wanted to read what he was told each evening, to do as he was told. There were great writers he had never read, would never read. His daughters would begin that journey soon enough, the world opening up for them in its entirety.

Personally, I think it deplorable to place the words and opinions of others on the book jacket. I want the first words read by the reader of my book to be written by me.

How is it possible to feel exiled from a language that isn't mine? That I don't know? Maybe because I'm a writer who doesn't belong completely to any language.

When I began writing stories as a child, I wrote copies of what I read, and in many respects, that is what I've have continued doing, in only a slightly less obvious way. The illusion of artistic freedom is just that, an illusion. No words are "my words"—I merely arrange and use them in a certain way.

She prefers books to jewels and saris.

Credo che tradurre sia il modo più profondo, più intimo di leggere qualcosa. Una Traduzione è un bellissimo incontro dinamico tra due lingue, due testi, due scrittori. Implica uno sdoppiamento, un rinnovamento. Nel passato amavo tradurre dal latino, dal greco antico, dal bengalese. È stato un modo di avvicinarmi alle diverse lingue, di sentirmi legata ad autori lontanissimi da me, nello spazio e nel tempo.

Credo che leggere in una lingua straniera sia il modo più intimo di leggere.

Grazie a questo progetto di scrittura spero che un pezzo di me possa restare qui, ed è consolante, anche se mi auguro che ogni libro al mondo appartenga a tutti, oppure a nessuno, da nessuna parte.