#boo

To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent. ↗

— Nelson Algren

#criticism #critics #literature #writing #literary-criticism

There must always be a fringe of the experimental in literature--poems bizarre in form and curious in content, stories that overreach for what has not hitherto been put in story form, criticism that mingles a search for new truth with bravado. We should neither scoff at this trial margin nor take it too seriously. Without it, literature becomes inert and complacent. But the everyday person's reading is not, ought not to be, in the margin. He asks for a less experimental diet, and his choice is sound. If authors and publishers would give him more heed they would do wisely. They are afraid of the swarming populace who clamor for vulgar sensation (and will pay only what it is worth), and they are afraid of petulant literati who insist upon sophisticated sensation (and desire complimentary copies). The stout middle class, as in politics and industry, has far less influence than its good sense and its good taste and its ready purse deserve. ↗

— Henry Seidel Canby

#literature #middle-class #middlebrows #diet

If you cannot read all your books...fondle them---peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#first-sentence

Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up. ↗

— John Edgar Wideman

#importance-of-words #insightful #writing-craft #writing-craft

When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before. ↗

— Cliff Fadiman

#book #classic #did #more #reread

She is too fond of books, and it has addled her brain. ↗

— Louisa May Alcott

#reading #louisa-may-alcott

I am Cinna's bird, ignited, flying frantically to escape something inescapable. The feathers of flame that grow from my body. Beating my wings only fans the blaze. I consume myself, but to no end. Finally, my wings begin to falter, I lose height, and gravity pulls me into a foamy sea the color of Finnick's eyes. I float on my back, which continues to burn beneath the water, but the agony quiets to pain. When I am adrift and unable to navigate, that's when they come. The dead. The ones I loved fly as birds in the open sky above me. Soaring, weaving, calling to me to join them. I want so badly to follow them, but the seawater saturates my wings, making it impossible to lift them. The ones I hated have taken to the water, horrible scaled things that tear my salty flesh with needle teeth. Biting again and again. Dragging me beneath the surface. The small white bird tinged in pink dives down, buries her claws in my chest, and tries to keep me afloat. "No, Katniss! No! You can't go!" But the ones I hated are winning, and if she clings to me, she'll be lost as well. "Prim, let go!" And finally she does. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#book #burn #dead #end #fire

All the problems in the world lead to one - narrow-minded people. my Incredible Future . ↗

— Ivan Stoikov - Allan Bard

#books #fantasy #incredible-future #sci-fy #scifi

Ce n'était qu'un renard semblable à cent mille autres. Mais j'en ai fait mon ami, et il est maintenant unique au monde. ↗

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

#children-s-books #foreign-language #french #friendship #friendship

When someone gives me either a democratic or republican pamphlet, I throw it in their face. I’m a librarian, damn it! We only take book donations. ↗

— Bauvard

#funny #humor #politics #funny