4,370 Quotes About Literature

There are countless circles of hell; believers never penetrate the ninth circle.

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

He awaits himself while walking, out of the icy circle to escape.

When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...].

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves.

Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.

I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

Your love and your love of literature, like song, should flow seamlessly in an unbroken rhythm.

For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately.