Quotes About Literature

At last her mother looks up from the book and smiles and says, "I read to keep from being sad.

Nobody wanted to read sucky novels, and those people who wanted deep meaning didn't want it in every damn story

I'm no John Grisham or Thomas Pynchon

Is it worth something?" "At retail, from a collector, it would bring forty thousand dollars, maybe a few thousand less.

MY LIFE BEFORE JACOB'S LADDER, ISLAND LIFE, LITERATURE, and PARANORMAL

His first work, Orchids in Winter, was the initial selection of a TV talk-show host's

Three million hardcovers flew off shelves. Film rights sold in a frantic auction.

The book was translated into forty languages.

His third never made the list, sold fifteen thousand copies, and was savaged by critics.

There are days when it seems to me that in literature the most convincing depiction of the world in which we live is to be found in the phantasmagorical kingdom through which Lewis Carroll took Alice on a tour.

Your favorite author? This was an important question. I'd dated men who had never read a book. Reading was a passion of mine and I couldn't imagine being involved with someone who didn't understand the importance of books and stories.

I was looking forward to my visit to the library. I've always been a big reader and thought I might eventually volunteer as a Friend of the Library.

Agents don't sell books, good writing does. Plotting and characterization are what interest an editor. Agents negotiate contracts, but they don't sell books.

All girls [should read] THE BREADWINNER by Deborah Ellis. ~ Malala Yousafzai

I am a book I neither wrote nor read.

I stayed in the library, crushed breathless by the smoldering power of all those words – many of them unfathomable – until Happy Hour. And then I left.

I've masqueraded as a literary critic, and with a great deal more success, but criticism isn't real—it's not a real thing.

Reading is of course dry work, and further refreshment was called for and consumed.

People plan their reading? Takes all kinds… Books just find me. They converge upon me like flocks of benevolent vultures. They follow me home, wagging their tails. I'm pretty sure they breed in the dark, too, like mushrooms. When I finish a book, I pick up whatever looks most appealing from the tottering piles at hand.

Una dama novelista me dijo una vez, que escribir novelas era arte de caníbales, pues uno mezcla con frecuencia pequeñas porciones de sus amigos y sus enemigos, los sazona con imaginación y permite que todo eso se cocine en un sabroso guiso

Don't go overboard in avoiding "said." Basically, "said" is the default for dialogue, and a good thing, too; it's an invisible word that doesn't draw attention to itself.

the chill. Grant's nose was

writing novels was a cannibal's art, in which one often mixed small portions of one's friends and one's enemies together, seasoned them with imagination, and allowed the whole to stew together into a savory concoction.

the library held a hushed exultation, as though the cherished volumes were all singing soundlessly within their covers.