Quotes About Literature

In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation, a sage, someone with no institutional affiliations who could offer an authoritative word on our times as well as on our moral life.

I do not believe in sex distinction in literature, law, politics, or trade - or that modesty and virtue are more becoming to women than to men, but wish we had more of it everywhere.

The key thing for an intellectually rigorous writer to come to grips with is the marginalization of literature by more technologically sophisticated and thus more visceral forms.

The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible.

I was born in 1952, so obviously the sixties were important. That's when I came of age. It was also a revolutionary period, a complete break with the generation before us in terms of culture, literature, music, and in politics, of course. 1968 was an important year; I was 16, and the world became clear to me, visible, so to say.

If you're a Norwegian writer, you are not visible in the world. The door of the English language is very hard to open for a Norwegian writer.

'In the Wake' was a very bleak book. This relationship was not too good, the father and son. This time around, I wanted a father and a son who really loved each other, which would be visible on the first page and would still be there on the last page.

To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength.

We read to learn about the world. We write to change the world.

Aunt Lovey used to tell me that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed a writer's voice. 'Read,' she'd say, 'and if you have a writer's voice, one day it will shout out, 'I can do that too!

First and foremost, Austen was sensible. She didn't feed her romantic imagination to excess.

She loved romance novels—granted some of the titles were hokey, but that didn't affect the quality of the story inside—and it irritated her when people put them down without ever having read one.

What I had come to love about book club (besides the fabulous desserts and free liquor) was how in hearing so many opinions about the same book, your own opinion expanded, as if you'd read the book several times instead of just once.

More and more I lived in books, they were my comfort, refuge, addiction, compensation for the humiliations that attended contact with the world outside.

The books. So many books. She adored reading. It introduced her to characters, took her to places where she was never lonely.

It is like having a book out from the library. It is like constantly having a book out from the library.

Lewis was unique in the academia of his day for championing (along with his good friend, J. R. R. Tolkien) children's literature and fantasy novels as serious genres deserving serious consideration.

The success of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings helped restore the reputation of these discredited genres, thus enabling moderns to draw on their innocent wisdom.

There is no such thing as an innocent reading, we must ask what reading we are guilty of.

I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

The authors of book reviews would consider themselves dishonored were they to mention, as they should, the subject of the book.

I must confess that I and a few others are burdened with heavy responsibilities regarding the future of criticism. I am certainly, if not the inventor, then at least one of the first systematizers of an absurd critical practice that, as soon as it had peeked its beak out of the nest, flapping its new wet wings, took flight in the minds of the young, becoming a wild ox and sowing avant-garde literature with the mighty tomes of what might as well be called the abstract bear.

Yes, I read. I have that absurd habit. I like beautiful poems, moving poetry, and all the beyond of that poetry. I am extraordinarily sensitive to those poor, marvelous words left in our dark night by a few men I never knew.

Maar nu ben ik heusch zoo dwaas niet meer: ik hoû alleen veel van lezen en is dat nu zoo 'esthetisch'?