Quotes about Literature

Punctured, utterly deflated, he dropped into a chair and, covering his face with his hands, began to weep. A few minutes later, however, he thought better of it and took four tablets of soma. Upstairs in his room the Savage was reading Romeo and Juliet.

If a man write little, he had need have a great memory."[12]

So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.

It has often been said there's so much to be read, you never can cram all those words in your head. So the writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads. That's why my belief is the briefer the brief is, the greater the sigh of the reader's relief is. And that's why your books have such power and strength. You publish with shorth! (Shorth is better than length.)

As a child, my whole life was books. They were my fantasy. That's where I could go. That was a lot of times [what] saved me.

Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.

They come as a boon and a blessing to men, The Pickwick, the Owl, and the Waverley pen.

The books of C.S. Lewis had a very profound, indirect effect on me.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

I suppose books mean more than people to me anyway

I avoided writers very carefully because they can perpetuate trouble as no one else can.

And so we beat on, books against the critics, borne back ceaslessly into rewrites.