All Quotes By Tag: Literature

“For my part, I love to give myself up to the illusion of poetry. A hero of fiction that never existed is just as valuable to me as a hero of history that existed a thousand years ago.”

“Forget it. Never explain; never apologize. You can either write posthumously or you can’t.”

“Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people”

“He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.”

“When the star dies, Its eye closes; tired of watching, It flies back to its first bright dream.”

“This is surely the most significant of the elements that Tolkien brought to fantasy…. his arranged marriage between the Elder Edda and “The Wind in the Willows”–big Icelandic romance and small-scale, cozy English children’s book. The story told by “The Lord of the Rings” is essentially what would happen if Mole and Ratty got drafted into the Nibelungenlied.”

“Later, you told me what your mother had said. How your father, the farmer, rose up slowly. You told me how your mother wailed on the other end of the phone, grieving her loss and complaining about the basketball of a goitre perched on her shoulder. She told you, your father walked onto the veranda and saw a chook floating ten feet above the ground. The chook didn’t flap a feather and just sat there brooding, swaying in the breeze.”

“What on earth did you say to Isola? She stopped in on her way to pick up Pride and Prejudice and to berate me for never telling her about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Why hadn’t she known there were better love stories around? Stories not riddled with ill-adjusted men, anguish, death and graveyards!”

“The house was the color of baby vomit.”

“She knew exactly how she ought to feel, for she was well read in our greater and lesser English poets, but the unfortunate fact was that she did not really like being kissed at all.”

“For thy sweet love remembr’d such wealth bringsThat then, I scorn to change my state with kings.”

“But those who believe that flowers grow in vases don’t understand anything about literature. The library has now become her first-aid kit, and she’s going to give the children a little of the medicine that helped her recover her smile when she thought she’d lost it forever.”

“Apollinaire said a poet should be ‘of his time.’ I say objects of the Digital Age belong in newspapers, not literature. When I read a novel, I don’t want credit cards; I want cash in ducats and gold doubloons.”

“I don’t believe in ONE holy book. I believe all books are holy. Of course, some books are holy shit.”

“You can’t eat [literature], that’s the problem,” he said. “I’ve tried, it’s very dry, and not at all nutritious.”