#literature

A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle... ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#nabokov #quote #reader #reading #brain

Sound unbound by nature becomes bounded by art. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#books #dejan-stojanovic #literature #literature-quotes #nature

Literary art's sudden, startling truth and beauty make us feel, in the most solitary part of us, that we are not alone, and that there are meanings that cannot be bought, sold or traded, that do not decay and die. This socially and economically worthless experience is called transcendence, and you cannot assign a paper, or a grade, or an academic rank, on that. Literature is too sacred to be taught. It needs only to be read. ↗

— Lee Siegel

#literature #art

But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful? It is. Only I do get tired. ↗

— Melanie Benjamin

#literature #loss #love #love

It's different in Scotland. People who come to readings are more interested in literature as such, but the readership in general is really quite diverse. It's a cliche, but it's said that people who read my books don't read any other books, and you do get that element. ↗

— Irvine Welsh

#books #cliche #come #different #diverse

A hidden spark of the dream sleeps In the forest and waits In the celestial spheres of the brain. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#celestial #circling #dejan-stojanovic #dreams #forest

Dreams are our only geography—our native land. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dreams #geography #land #literature #literature-quotes

I can only bow to the will of the heaven, but not to the will of these men. ↗

— Eiji Yoshikawa

#taira-no-kiyomori #the-heike-story #men

I could have sworn that the man's eyes were no longer watching his daughter dying in agony, that instead the gorgeous colors of flames and the sight of a woman suffering in them were giving him joy beyond measure. ↗

— Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

#japan #japanese #japanese-literature #japan

The world has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Turgenev, and completed by Dostoevsky. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as surely as the People's Palace rose out debris of a novel. Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#philosophy #faith