Quotes About Books

Atâtea c?rÈ›i, atât de puÈ›in timp.

a dominant class enforces rules about what is and is not acceptable. It defines good art, good food, good books—and creates an exclusionary vocabulary for describing them

Bourdieu argued that a dominant class enforces rules about what is and is not acceptable. It defines good art, good food, good books—and creates an exclusionary vocabulary for describing them. "Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier," he famously wrote.

We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

You spend too much time on ephemeras. The majority of modern books are merely wavering reflections of the present. They disappear very quickly. You should read more old books. The classics. Goethe. What is merely new is the most transitory of all things. It is beautiful today, and tomorrow merely ludicrous.

Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wie lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder verstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muss die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns.

los libros son códigos y es propio de este tipo de justicia que uno sea condenado no sólo inocente, sino también ignorante.

Ah, coherence, that old canard. All the books are full of it, in all the classrooms the teachers are chalking it up on the blackboard; the mother dreams of it while her baby is at her breast - and there you are, sitting here, asking me about coherence. You must have had an unusually misspent youth.

Wir brauchen Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wir lieber hätten als uns, wie wenn wir in die Wälder verstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, ein Buch muss die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns

This can be explained by my theory that living authors have a living relationship with their books. With their very existence they fight for or against them. The true, independent life of the book doesn't begin until the death of the author, or more correctly some time after his death, for these zealous men keep struggling for their books even a while after they have died. But then the book is left all alone and has to rely on the strength of its own heartbeat.

Acho que devemos ler apenas os tipos de livros que nos ferem ou esfaqueiam. Se o livro que estamos lendo não nos acorda com um golpe na cabeça, para que estamos lendo?

Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wie lieber hatten als und, wie wenn wir in Wälder verstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muss die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns. (An Oskar Pollak, 27.01.1904)

It may be possible, I would not know, for a man who has conquered chaos to begin to write; those will be holy books. Or begin to love; that will be love, not fear of chaos...Not until the world has been ordered does the writer begin.

Instead I have always hidden from you, in my room, among my books, with crazy friends, or with extravagant ideas.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, What are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to.

Leave me my books! I have nothing else.

Most of these wild animals depart in autumn when the sun changes their behavior and they feel the urge to migrate or go off alone. While they are with us, however, they become characters in my books, articles, and stories.

All my books draw heavily on my own experiences, and these are not just places I have gone to on holiday, they're locations I know them intimately from lengthy expeditions, most of which have been spent on the hunt for wildlife.

I love books, I love art, I'm a fanatic nature and wildlife person. People assume I'm a political animal, power hungry, wanting to run for office. And anyone who knows me knows that none of that's true.

Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Lee Child and George R. R. Martin write wildly different books. Their writing, plotting and styles have little or nothing in common. But they all write books and characters that readers find appealing.

I'm generalizing wildly, but academic books find safety in explanations that reduce the chaos of social life.

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

William Kittredge's 'Hole in the Sky' is one of my favorite books. Ian Frazier's 'Family' I adore.

Two more years were to go by before I knew anything about William Blake. Many years later, when his wife died, my godfather gave me the two books as a remembrance.