Quotes About Literature

at home the bookshelves connected heaven and earth.

I think the internet is a great marketing tool--but marketing is not my job. I'm a writer. My job is to write novels.

There's always been a need for horror fiction, though--ghost stories have been a staple of every human society since the beginning of recorded literature--and while commercially the field may have its ups and downs, it will never go away. Hell, look at the Bible: gods, devils, ghosts, witches, giants, resurrections. That's one big horror story. And it's the most popular book on the planet.

You cannot read Dickens without putting in a little more effort. You cannot eat a ripe pawpaw without its innards and juice spilling down your chin. Likewise, the language of Dickens makes your mouth do strange things, and when you're not used to his words your jaw will creak.

But you know, Matilda, you cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames. For me, Matilda, Great Expectations is such a book. It gave me permission to change my life.

Fine writers should split hairs together, and sit side by side, like friendly apes, to pick the fleas from each others fur.

What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.

People say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

There is something about that moment, when literature becomes accessible, and a door of the world opens.

Too much is written by the men who can't write about the men who do write.

Perhaps the chief cause which has retarded the progress of poetry in America, is the want of that exclusive cultivation, which so noble a branch of literature would seem to require. Few here think of relying upon the exertion of poetic talent for a livelihood, and of making literature the profession of life. The bar or the pulpit claims the greater part of the scholar's existence, and poetry is made its pastime.

Every author has the whole past to contend with; all the centuries are upon him. He is compared with Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton.

It frequently happens that where the second line is sublime, the third, in which he [Lucan] meant to rise still higher, is perfect bombast.

In the Odyssey one may liken Homer to the setting sun, of which the grandeur remains without the intensity.

Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

No more Keats, I entreat: flay him alive; if some of you don't I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin.

Quién no escribe para gustar a las mujeres?

The mere brute pleasure of reading — the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments.

That part of a work of one author found in another is not of itself piracy, or sufficient to support an action; a man may adopt part of the work of another; he may so make use of another's labors for the promotion of science and the benefit of the public.

They were perfectly suited. They would speak of books the livelong day and night and bore everyone else but themselves to distraction.

She's never met an adjective or adverb she didn't like.