Literature Books Quotes

I like to be surrounded by books. My wife Evelyn has a Ph.D. in comparative literature, so we have a lot of her Spanish and German literature books which are wasted on me, plus a lot of novels and books on art and architecture shared by us both. Evelyn used to edit an art magazine called 'FMR,' so we have a common interest in design. ~ David Chipperfield

You might have noticed that I have been sending you used books. I have done this not to save money, but to make a point which is that a used book, unlike a used car, hasn't lost any of its initial value. A good story rolls of the lot into the hands of its new reader as smoothly as the day it was written. And there's another reason for these used paperbacks that never cost much even when new; I like the idea of holding a book that someone else has held, of eyes running over lines that have already seen the light of other eyes. That, in one image, is the community of readers, is the communion of literature. ~ Yann Martel

Life is a rich literature. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

There are people out there who genuinely love literature, who genuinely love to read and read widely, who will never like, or even necessarily get, my books. That was a hard one to swallow, to not feel slighted by. ~ Lynn Coady

There's no better way to inform and expand you mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature. ~ Stephen R. Covey

My passion has always been books and literature, and teaching. ~ Azar Nafisi

In fact I don't think of literature, or music, or any art form as having a nationality. Where you're born is simply an accident of fate. I don't see why I shouldn't be more interested in say, Dickens, than in an author from Barcelona simply because I wasn't born in the UK. I do not have an ethno-centric view of things, much less of literature. Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Our job, then, is two-fold: to focus on our own failings as writers. But also to speak more forcefully as advocates for literature. Books are a powerful antidote for loneliness, for the moral purposelessness of the leisure class. It's our job to convince the 95 percent of people who don't read books, who instead medicate themselves in front of screens, that literary art isn't some esoteric tradition, but a direct path to meaning, to an understanding of the terror that lives beneath our consumptive ennui. ~ Steve Almond

The more you learn,the more you want to learn. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

One is never too young for fine literature . . . ~ Elin Hilderbrand

I loathe it when they [English teachers] are bullied by no-nothing parents or cowardly school boards. ~ Pat Conroy

Sometimes books feel like the only thing that keep her sane. Actually, she knows that they're the only reason she's still even vaguely okay right now. That's what she clings to: reading great books and seeing great films and, for as long as she's immersed in them, being able to forget, if only for a short time, about the reality of her life. ~ Steph Bowe

Some are born to greatness; some achieve greatness; some have greatness thrust upon them.' It is in this way that the librarian has become a censor of literature... books that distinctly commend what is wrong, that teach how to sin and how pleasant sin is, sometimes with and sometimes without the added sauce of impropriety, are increasingly popular, tempting to the author to imitate them, the publishers to produce, the bookseller to exploit. Thank heaven they do not tempt the librarian. ~ Arthur E. Bostwick

Let us not kid ourselves; let us remember that literature is of no use whatever, except in the very special case of somebody's wishing to become, of all things, a Professor of Literature. ~ Gustave Flaubert

I wrote "David" because it seemed to me that children, who can love a book more passionately than any grown person, got such a lot of harmless entertainment and not enough real, valuable literature. ~ Anne Holm

Lonely children often have imaginary playmates but I was never lonely; rather, I was solitary, and wanted no company at all other than books and movies, and my own imagination. ~ Gore Vidal

The early readers are in-between books for the kids who aren't ready for novels yet but are done with my picture books. It's really rewarding to think that they can grow up reading my books at all the different levels. ~ Grace Lin

The birth of a true poet is neither an insignificant event nor an easy delivery. Complications generally begin long before the fated soul carries its dubious light into whatever womb has been kind enough to volunteer the intricate machinery of its blood and prayers and muscles for a gestation period much longer than nine months or even nine years. ~ Aberjhani

But the cinephile is ... a neurotic! (That's not a pejorative term.) The Bronte sisters were neurotic, and it's because they were neurotic that they read all those books and became writers. The famous French advertising slogan that says, "When you love life, you go to the movies," it's false! It's exactly the opposite: when you don't love life, or when life doesn't give you satisfaction, you go to the movies. ~ Francois Truffaut

You'll be old and you never lived, and you kind of feel silly to lie down and die and to never have lived, to have been a job chaser and never have lived. ~ Gertrude Stein

Oh Senor" said the niece. "Your grace should send them to be burned (books), just like all the rest, because it's very likely that my dear uncle, having been cured of the chivalric disease, will read these and want to become a shepherd and wander through the woods and meadows singing and playing and, what would be even worse, become a poet, and that, they say, is an incurable and contagious disease. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Your first written sentence is the foundation of all of your dreams. ~ Rob Bignell, Editor

I got interested in palaeontology and vertebrate history - sparked by books on human evolution - then vertebrate evolution. Studying with palaeontologists kindled my interest in fieldwork. ~ Greg Graffin

It's the best thing in the world to save a life, no matter whose it is. ~ Mark Fripp Character In Come Find Me

In some of the early northern European paintings, Christ looks like you flushed him out from under a bridge, but in Sunday-school books and the sorts of pictures they sell at Christian supply stores, he falls somewhere between Kenny Loggins and Jared Leto, always doe-eyed and, of course, white, with brown - not black - hair, usually wavy. And he always has a fantastic body, shown at its best on the cross, which - face it - was practically designed to make a man's stomach and shoulders look good.

What would happen, I often wonder, if someone sculpted a morbidly obese Jesus with titties and acne scars, and hair on his back? On top of that, he should be short - five foot two at most. "Sacrilege!" people would shout. But why? Doing good deeds doesn't make you good-looking. ~ David Sedaris

[Y]ou, one day, will knock lips with Turkish-coffee-clad veils whose beds our kin must tuck in misty-eyed. ~ Armineonila M.

What I always try to do in all my books is to make the stories such that if you don't agree with me politically or you're not interested in the thematics, the story will still keep you turning the pages. ~ China Mieville

Literature destabilizes thought by breaking open language and smuggling in sound, rhythm, and image--an invasion of aesthetics. More easily than analytic writing, poetry can emancipate itself from the standard definitions of words, enabling a breakthrough to new (and perhaps wayward or even nonsensical) meaning, which can then develop after the fact--different at each new reading. Literary language is presumptuous. It dips into the unknown in order to get nearer to a truth different from that of the superficially visible. As the poet Franz Josef Czernin described it, it is as though one step after another into emptiness could become a ladder. Literary writing can take the writers themselves by surprise; it can disturb and disappoint them--for stirring up turmoil is inherent in metaphor. Thus with every flash of understanding that comes from hearing or reading a poem, the fundamental work of thinking is taken up anew. ~ Marie Luise Knott

If we wish to quench our thirst, we must lay aside books which explain thirst and take a drink. ~ Jean-Pierre De Caussade

In literature, you either create a classical or create a foam! There is no in between! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

There will be birthdays in the next twelve months; books keep well; they're easy to wrap: buy those books now. Buy replacements for any books looking raggedy on your shelves. ~ Roy Blount, Jr.

People are more concerned about the economy then these ridiculous concerns as to gender inequity in society, as manifested in marriages, in the mental health system, and then in literature. ~ Kate Zambreno

Now maybe I wouldn't do it, but I was a child then," said Oryx more softly. "Why are you so angry?"
"I don't buy it," said Jimmy. Where was her rage, how far down was it buried, what did he have to do to dig it up?
"You don't buy what?"
"Your whole fucking story. All this sweetness and acceptance and crap."
"If you don't want to buy that, Jimmy," said Oryx, looking at him tenderly, "what is it that you would like to buy instead?" (167) ~ Margaret Atwood

Your whole life and the story of your journey is the landscape picture on the front of the box of a 1,000 piece puzzle. The pieces are each a small sticky note that ends in mid-sentence. You simply need to figure out where each one starts and ends. ~ Ashly Lorenzana

Knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled. ~ John Milton

Reading was a big thing, yes. Books were a big thing. But the things that stick out were the newspapers. ~ James Earl Jones

Clearly one must read every good book at least once every ten years. ~ C.S. Lewis

'Legends Walking' was the first of my books to go to a second printing based on strong initial orders, but much of that printing never found its audience. ~ Jane Lindskold

Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, books had no real existence in our world. Like seeds in the beak of a bird waiting to fall to earth, or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being. they lie dormant hoping for the chance to emerge.They want us to give them life. ~ John Connolly

Growing up loving the Bible made me apt to love other books. I don't love them in the same way I love the Bible, but a lesser love came easily. The splendor of sunlight does not take away ~ John Mark Reynolds

My parents placed a high value on reading, starting with the King James Bible, and one whole wall of our living room was filled, floor to ceiling, with books. But I was an outside kid and didn't have the patience to be a reader. That changed, briefly, when I discovered Tom Sawyer in the fourth grade. That was the one book I truly loved. I read it several times, then read Huckleberry Finn. I was fascinated by the way Twain played with language and used regional dialects. But what amazed me most was that Twain allowed the reader to laugh. Reading didn't have to be drudgery. Twain didn't allow it. ~ John R. Erickson

An appetite for knowledge is apt to rush one off one's feet, like any other appetite if not curbed. I often stand in the in the centre of the Library here and think despairingly how impossible it is ever to become possessed of all the wealth of facts and ideas contained in the books surrounding me on every hand. ~ W.N.P. Barbellion

I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. The day Hazlitt came he opened to "I hate to read new books," and I hollered "Comrade!" to whoever owned it before me. ~ Helene Hanff

Master was a little crazy; he had spent too many years reading books overseas, talked to himself in his office, did not always return greetings, and had too much hair. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Is there anywhere on earth exempt from these swarms of new books? Even if, taken out one at a time, they offered something worth knowing, the very mass of them would be an impediment to learning from satiety if nothing else ~ Erasmus

I loved Midori. And I had probably known as much for a while. I had just been avoiding the conclusion for a very long time. ~ Haruki Murakami

I don't think that children, if left to themselves, feel that there is an author behind a book, a somebody who wrote it. Grown-ups have fostered this quotient of identity, particularly teachers. Write a letter to your favorite author and so forth. When I was a child I never realized that there were authors behind books. Books were there as living things, with identities of their own. ~ P.L. Travers

I bring you with reverent hands The books of my numberless dreams. ~ William Butler Yeats

A woman is like the colour of the rainbow, very colourful and so beautiful. ~ Gift Gugu Mona

We have, then, three Books wholly and one partially written before, and two after, the Preface; and only one of the first four is consistent with it, while the two later are entirely in agreement with it. In the first group, the adventure which fits into the scheme in the Letter is the first of all, which is a significant fact. If Spenser were somewhat hastily reconstructing his scheme he would naturally test its coherence with what he had already written in the first Book and perhaps re-write certain passages. He may have forgotten the details of Books II and III or Raleigh's urgency may have left no time for the adjustment of the details.

These discrepancies are all connected with the twelve days' Feast and Gloriana's appointment of the knights, and this part may well have been suggested by Raleigh. He probably intended the poem not only to make Spenser's fortune at court but also to reinstate himself in the Queen's favour. In the circumstances he would wish to make the reference to the Queen as clear and as flattering as possible. ~ Janet Spens

In all the books love is one of the great facts that mould human life. But it is a catastrophe: it happens suddenly and overwhelmingly, and there is little to be said about it. ~ Virginia Woolf