4,370 Quotes About Literature

The most common mistake students of literature make is to go straight for what the poem or novel says, setting aside the way that it says it. To read like this is to set aside the ‘literariness’ of the work – the fact that it is a poem or play or novel, rather than an account of the incidence of soil erosion in Nebraska.

I must warn you that the books I like are not necessarily the ones I think are the best. I like them for various reasons not always easy to explain.

Each of us, deep down, believes that the whole world issues from his own precious body, like images projected from a tiny slide onto an earth-sized screen. And then, deeper down, each of us knows he’s wrong.

She's got feet like boats, whiskers like an American, and her undies are filthy.

There is nothing for it but for all of us to invent our own ideal libraries of classics. I would say that such a library ought to be composed half of books we have read and that have really counted for us, and half of books we propose to read and presume will come to count—leaving a section of empty shelves for surprises and occasional discoveries

Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none

Through it [literature] we know the past, govern the present, and influence the future.

இலக்கணம் பின்னால் ஊர்ந்து ஊர்ந்து வரும், இலக்கியம் முன்னால் பறந்து சென்றுகொண்டிருக்கும்

[...] as Kurt Vonnegut pointed out [...] the literary novel has become extraordinarily privatistic of late. It's as if the big issues (Does God exist? from whence springs decency? what sort of species is Homo Sapiens?) were either settled or not worth discusssing, and serious writers should therefore confine themselves to their various ethnic heritages and interpersonal relationships.