...Quotes on Reading, Writing @ Literature...

bianglala

"Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told."

- Colum McCann -

bianglala

"There is something about that moment, when literature becomes accessible, and a door of the world opens. "

- Lois Lowry -

bianglala

"That's why literature is so fascinating. It's always up for interpretation, and could be a hundred different things to a hundred different people. It's never the same thing twice."

- Sara Raasch -

bianglala

"To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat— some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself.

This isn't the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse."

- Fernando Pessoa -

seribulan

      “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”  
  ―    Douglas Adams   

seribulan

      “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”  
  ―    Winston S. Churchill

seribulan

      “Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”  
  ―    Ray Bradbury

seribulan

      “You can fix anything but a blank page.”  
  ―    Nora Roberts

seribulan

      “When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”  
  ―    Kurt Vonnegut

kutaq

There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.

– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

kutaq

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.

– André Gide, Autumn Leaves

seribulan

      “To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.”  
  ―    Edgar Allan Poe

bianglala

"The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish."

- Robert Louis Stevenson -

bianglala

"People don't expect too much from literature. They just want to know they're not alone with being confused."

- Jonathan Ames -

bianglala

"When we read, we decide when, where, how long, and about what. One of the few places on earth that it is still possible to experience an instant sense of freedom and privacy is anywhere you open up a good book and begin to read. When we read silently, we are alone with our own thoughts and one other voice. We can take our time, consider, evaluate, and digest what we read—with no commercial interruptions, no emotional music or special effects manipulation. And in spite of the advances in electronic information exchange, the book is still the most important medium for presenting ideas of substance and value, still the only real home of literature."

- Andrew Clements -

bianglala

"What people value in their books—and thus what they count as literature—really tells you more about them than it does about the book."

- Brent Weeks -

bianglala

"The love of literature, of language, of the mystery of the mind and heart showing themselves in the minute, strange, and unexpected combinations of letters and words, in the blackest and coldest print—the love which he had hidden as if it were illicit and dangerous, he began to display, tentatively at first, and then boldly, and then proudly."

- John Williams -

bianglala

"Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary."

- Boris Pasternak -

bianglala

"When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape – into different countries, mores, speech patterns – but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life’s subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic."

- Julian Barnes -

bianglala

"That is what literature offers — a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place."

- Jeanette Winterson (Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?) -