The proper study of mankind is books.
Aldous HuxleyThe answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.
Margaret AtwoodThe main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.
Dr. SeussPoetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.
David HareA room without books is like a body without a soul.
Marcus Tullius CiceroBut let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Khalil GibranI have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.
Robert FrostShakespeare didn’t work at all for me.
Charles BukowskiI like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more.
E. E. CummingsSpeculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we’re probably not going to see.
Margaret AtwoodOn the subject of literary genres, I’ve always felt that my response to poetry is inadequate. I’d love to be the kind of person that drifts off into the garden with a slim volume of Elizabethan verse or a sheaf of haikus, but my passion is story.
J. K. RowlingThe discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.
John SteinbeckFrom a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the ‚Pilgrim’s Progress,‘ my first collection was of John Bunyan’s works in separate little volumes.
Benjamin FranklinAs the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
Woody AllenThere is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.
Walt DisneyI was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka.
Margaret AtwoodI was a chemistry major, but I’m always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I’ve brought scientific thinking to literature. There’s been very little gratitude for this.
Kurt VonnegutPapa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.
Charles DickensSo foul and fair a day I have not seen.
William ShakespeareHow far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
William ShakespearePart of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.
Steve JobsThere are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.
Henry David ThoreauThe truest form of any form of revolutionary Left, whatever you want to call it, was Jack Kerouac, E.E. Cummings, & Ginsberg’s period. Excuse me, but that’s where it was at.
David BowieThe book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create.
Jeff BezosYou see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.
Ernest HemingwayA poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.
Robert FrostThere would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication.
Margaret AtwoodThe poets are only the interpreters of the gods.
SocratesThe poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.
Maya AngelouAny good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.
Denzel WashingtonWhat inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.
Billie EilishI shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.
Lucius Annaeus SenecaWith me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.
Edgar Allan PoeIn every author let us distinguish the man from his works.
VoltaireFiction is the truth inside the lie.
Stephen KingTwo roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
Robert FrostScience arose from poetry… when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheI started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.
Paul AusterPoetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.
Edmund BurkeLook at a book. A book is the right size to be a book. They’re solar-powered. If you drop them, they keep on being a book. You can find your place in microseconds. Books are really good at being books, and no matter what happens, books will survive.
Douglas AdamsAge appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
Francis BaconWhen love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
Khalil GibranAnd whether you’re an honest man, or whether you’re a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.
Benjamin FranklinI dislike Allegory – the conscious and intentional allegory – yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language.
J. R. R. TolkienGo not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.
J. R. R. TolkienI read poetry to save time.
Marilyn MonroeAt ev’ry word a reputation dies.
Alexander PopeI’ve never known any trouble than an hour’s reading didn’t assuage.
Arthur SchopenhauerA man will turn over half a library to make one book.
Samuel JohnsonBooks are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.
Henry David ThoreauPoliticians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
Arthur C. ClarkeMy literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.
Paulo CoelhoLiterature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.
Oscar WildeHope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.
Emily DickinsonMay I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.
Franz KafkaLike as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.
William ShakespeareLiterature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.
Christopher HitchensSome books leave us free and some books make us free.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAnd poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.
Stephen KingThose who have been writing literature have not been writing life.
Charles Bukowski