Quotes about Literature

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

'What is the use of a book', thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversations?'

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

Reading poetry and reading the great works of the canon that we were reading in the '60s and the '70s and '80s was mind altering.

I have never admitted the right of an elderly author to alter the work of a young author, even when the young author happens to be his former self.

We are tied down, all our days and for the greater part of our days, to the commonplace. That is where contact with the great thinkers, great literature helps. In their company we are still in the ordinary world, but it is the ordinary world transfigured and seen through the eyes of wisdom and genius. And some of their genius becomes ours. . . in The Great Conversation

As Thomas Hobbes said, "If I read as many books as most men do, I would be as dull-witted as they are.

Don't try to resist the effect that a work of imaginative literature has on you.

Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension.

In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away.

4. If the book is a new one with a dust jacket, READ THE PUBLISHER'S BLURB.

The questions answered by inspectional reading are: first, what kind of book is it? second, what is it about as a whole? and third, what is the structural order of the work whereby the author develops his conception or understanding of that general subject matter?