Quotes about Literature

I never thought, when I used to read books, what work it was to write them.... It's work enough to read them sometimes.... As to the writing, it has its own charms.

You shall read them, if you behave well,' said the old gentleman kindly; 'and you will like that, better than looking at the outsides,--that is, in some cases; because there are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

And my experience with public libraries is that the first volume of the book I inquire for is out, unless I happen to want the second, when that is out.

I believe in a kind of literature which makes clear that, at a deeper level, below the surface, we are tied together through invisible but existing threads. A kind of literature which talks about a lively, ever-changing world of unity, of which we are a small, but not insignificant part.

I think when I was 12, I started reading Evelyn Waugh, and I loved Evelyn Waugh so much, and I thought: 'This is how the world really is. If I could be Evelyn Waugh, then I would be happy.'

Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.

A bad book about the love of God remains a bad book.

I read the same amount of nonfiction and fiction.

I was saving the name of 'Geisel' for the Great American Novel.

Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.

There is still the feeling that women's writing is a lesser class of writing, that what goes on in the nursery or the bedroom is not as important as what goes on in the battlefield, that what women know about is a less category of knowledge.

Books, for me, have always been a way to escape. They were my path to personal freedom. I actually learned to read at the age of three, and once I did, I quickly learned that there was a whole world beyond my grandmother's farm in Mississippi.