4,370 Quotes About Literature

He would have liked it if everyone could have what he dreamed, glory and love, fortune and peace of heart. [On F. Scott Fitzgerald]

She too wants me to catch hold of her, he thought. That’s why she came with me to the tram. I could easily catch hold of her when she comes up to my step: nobody is looking. I could hold her and kiss her.But he did neither: and, when he was sitting alone in the deserted tram, he tore his ticket into shreds and stared gloomily at the corrugated footboard.

Our son Barney was about to be born when I started, [this book] and will start school about the time this is going to press. When I told him I was a writer and not a firefighter, he said:" but writers don't do anything.

The value of art lies in the love it engenders, not the hatred. It's love that makes books last. Please keep reading.

Each age, each guilty age, builds high walls round its Versailles; and personally I hate those walls most when they are made by literature and art.

I don't want to live - I want to love first, and live incidentally

Books are our greatest allies against ignorance.

Although we had had no precise exponents of realism, yet after Pushkin it was impossible for a Russian writer to depart too far from actuality. Even those who did not know what to do with "real life" had to cope with it as best they could. Hence, in order that the picture of life should not prove too depressing, the writer must provide himself in due season with a philosophy.

He looks up at her, and behind her, at the sky, which holds more stars than he ever has seen at one time, crowded together, a mess of dust and gems.