4,370 Quotes About Literature

Critical thinking does seem a superior sort of thinking because it seems as though the critic is actually going beyond the scope of what is being criticized in order to criticize it. That is only rarely a true assumption because, most often, the critic will seize on some little aspect that he or she understands and tackle only that.

It began in mystery and it will end in mystery, but what a rare and beautiful country lies in between.

Hindustan had become free. Pakistan had become independent soon after its inception but man was still slave in both these countries -- slave of prejudice … slave of religious fanaticism … slave of barbarity and inhumanity.

I know that I am a small, weak man, but I have amassed a large library; I dream of dangerous places.

‎Reading good literature is an experience of pleasure...but it is also an experience of learning what and how we are, in our human integrity and our human imperfection, with our actions, our dreams, and our ghosts, alone and in relationships that link us to others, in our public image and in the secret recesses of our consciousness.

The idea of some kind of objectively constant, universal literary value is seductive. It feels real. It feels like a stone cold fact that In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust, is better than A Shore Thing, by Snooki. And it may be; Snooki definitely has more one-star reviews on Amazon. But if literary value is real, no one seems to be able to locate it or define it very well. We’re increasingly adrift in a grey void of aesthetic relativism.

When the critic has said everything in his power about a literary text, he has still said nothing; for the very existence of literature implies that it cannot be replaced by non-literature

My God, the corruptions of literature. It put all these notions into our heads.

Leo a Casavella, que es mi contemporáneo. Leo a Grace Morales, que es mi contemporáneo. Leo Allen Ginsberg, que es mi contemporáneo. Leo a Pasolini, que es mi contemporáneo. Leo a Cervantes, que es mi contemporáneo. Leo a Dante y a Virgilio, porque son mis contemporáneos. Sólo leo a contemporáneos. A antiguos y obsoletos, prefiero no acercarme, sean del siglo que sean.