4,370 Quotes About Literature

There is something magical to me about literature and fiction and I think it can do things not only that pop culture cannot do but that are urgent now: one is that by creating a character in a work of fiction you can allow a reader to leap over the wall of self and to allow him to imagine himself not only somewhere else but someone else in a way that television and movies, in a way that no other form can do. I think people are essentially lonely and alone and frightened of being alone.

These fragments, these shivers of my heartAre mere lifetimes enclosed in a minute

Horror is the law of the world of living creatures, and civilization is concerned with masking that truth. Literature and art refine and beautify, and if they were to depict reality naked, just as everyone suspects it is (although we defend ourselves against that knowledge), no one would be able to stand it.

the whole of Victorian literature done up in grey paper & neatly tied with string

Literature is the notation of the heart.

Either you will be you or you will not be at all.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a bookworm is in need of a bookish community.

He will understand when it is too late that it is easier to love.

Gods whose dominion is over the Souls, Shades without sound, Void, and you, Burning River, and you, broad Spaces voiceless beneath the Night, may I remain sinless in telling what has been told to me, and, by your divine assent, reveal truth sunk in depths of earth and gloom.