Quotes about Literature
My friend was of opinion that when a man of rank appeared in that character [as an author], he deserved to have his merit handsomely allowed.
— Samuel Johnson
It is a good plan to have a book with you in all places and at all times. If you are presently without, hurry without delay to the nearest shop and buy one of mine.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
The best letters of our time are precisely those that can never be published.
— Virginia Woolf
The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.
— Mark Twain
From my boyhood I have had an intense and overwhelming conviction that my real vocation lay in the direction of literature. I have, however, had a most unaccountable difficulty in getting any responsible person to share my views. - Cyprian Overbeck Wells: A Literary Mosaic
— Arthur Conan Doyle
If in 100 years I am only known as the man who invented Sherlock Holmes then I will have considered my life a failure.
— Arthur Conan Doyle
The writer] can easily foresee his fate ... in an age when an author who wants to have readers must take care to write in such a way that the book can easily be perused during an afternoon nap ....
— Soren Kierkegaard
The German language is so sonorous, isn't it? Beautiful language...the language of poetry. Angry, angry poetry.
— John Oliver
Reading is more important to me than eating.
— John Piper
Doesn't all experience crumble in the end to mere literary material?
— Ellen Glasgow
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.
— Virginia Woolf
In a book, you can describe a scene and have any song you want playing on the radio and have any painting you want hanging on the wall. That was really freeing to me when I was writing 'Ready Player One.' I could throw in everything that I love.
— Ernest Cline