Quotes About Literature

Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible... The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.

It is interesting that the worst retellings of traditional fairy tales are those that heavy-handedly take the step of making a moral point.

MUDIE MEASURE Ten lines make one page; Ten pages make one point; Two points make one chapter; Five chapters make one episode; Two episodes make one volume; Three volumes make one tired.

Overambitious projects may be objectionable in many fields, but not in literature…. Only if poets and writers set themselves tasks that no one else dares imagine will literature continue to have a function.

In the even more congested times that await us, literature must aim at the maximum concentration of poetry and of thought.

Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top.

The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.

Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do,' Arkadian Porpirych says. 'What statistic allows one to identify the nations where literature enjoys true consideration better than the sums appropriated for controlling it and suppressing it? Where it is the object of such attentions, literature gains an extraordinary authority, inconceivable in countries where it is allowed to vegetate as an innocuous pastime, without risks.

It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books.

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler.

Every new book I read comes to be a part of that overall and unitary book that is the sum of my readings...if you need little to set the imagination going, I require even less: the promise of reading is enough.

There is nothing for it but for all of us to invent our own ideal libraries of classics. I would say that such a library ought to be composed half of books we have read and that have really counted for us, and half of books we propose to read and presume will come to count—leaving a section of empty shelves for surprises and occasional discoveries

Whether there is such a thing as Reality, of which the various levels are only partial aspects, or whether there are only levels, is something that literature cannot decide. Literature recognizes rather the *reality of the levels.*

A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans.

If the spark doesn't come, that's a pity; but we do not read the classics out of duty or respect, but only out of love.

There is no better place to keep a secret than in an unfinished novel.

Memory, or rather experience -- which is the memory of the event plus the wound it has inflicted on you, plus the change which it has wrought in you and which has made you different-- experience is the basic nutrition also for a work of literature (but not only for that), the true source of wealth for every writer (but not only for the writer), and yet the minute it gives shape to a work of literature it withers and dies. The writer, after writing, finds that he is the poorest of men.

This is the paradox of the power of literature: it seems that only when it is persecuted does it show its true powers, challenging authority, whereas in our permissive society it feels that it is being used merely to create the occasional pleasing contrast to the general ballooning of verbiage.

How is it possible to defeat not the authors but the functions of the author, the idea that behind each book there is someone who guarantees a truth in that world of ghosts and inventions by the mere fact of having invested in it his own truth, of having identified himself with that construction of words?

Among your books, in this assortment that does not make up a library, a dead or dormant part can still be distinguished, which is the store of volumes put aside, books read and rarely reread, or books you have not and will not read but have still retained (and dusted), and then a living part, which is the books you are reading or plan to read or from which you have not yet detached yourself or books you enjoy handling, seeing around you.

You're the absolute protagonist of this book, very well; but do you believe that gives you the right to have carnal relations with all the female characters?

1 )Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them. 2)A classic is a work which constantly generates a pulviscular cloud of critical discourse around it, but which always shakes the particles off.

With my spyglass I can observe a woman who is reading on a terrace in the valley," I told her. "I wonder if the books she reads are calming or upsetting." "How does the woman seem to you? Calm or upset?" "Calm." "Then she reads upsetting books.

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. …Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!… I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!