#literature

Kill me, or you are a murderer. ↗

— Franz Kafka

#literature #death

Her constant orders for beheading are shocking to those modern critics of children's literature who feel that juvenile fiction should be free of all violence and especially violence with Freudian undertones. Even the Oz books of L. Frank Baum, so singularly free of the horrors to be found in Grimm and Andersen, contain many scenes of decapitation. As far as I know, there have been no empirical studies of how children react to such scenes and what harm if any is done to their psyche. My guess is that the normal child finds it all very amusing and is not damaged in the least, but that books like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz should not be allowed to circulate indiscriminately among adults who are undergoing analysis. ↗

— Martin Gardner

#children #death #literature #media #reading

Since the Renaissance, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Mozart, and a host of others have shown that this religious dimension can be experienced and communicated apart from any religious context. But that is no reason for closing my heart to Job's cry, or to Jeremiah's, or to the Second Isaiah. I do not read them as mere literature; rather, I read Sophocles and Shakespeare with all my being, too. ↗

— Walter Kaufmann

#religious #communication

He was a very private person, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was no longer interested in the world or in other people... I got the feeling that Julián was living in the past, locked in his memories. Julián lived within himself, for his books and inside them - a comfortable prison of his own design." "You say this as if you envied him." "There are worse prisons than words. ↗

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

#escape #literature #pain #prison #reading

I know that I am a small, weak man, but I have amassed a large library; I dream of dangerous places. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#reading #dreams

Me? I had no dreams. No longings. Dreams only set you up for disappointment. Plus, you had to have a life to have dreams of a better life. ↗

— Julie Anne Peters

#high-school-kids #lgbtq #lgbtq-literature #luna #transgender

The bullet that has hit us Muslims today left the gun centuries ago when we let the clergy decide that knowledge and education were not important. ↗

— Nadeem Aslam

#islamism #literature #education

Although all days are equally long regardless of the season, some days are long not only seasonally but by rewards they offer. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#days #dejan-stojanovic #literature #literature-quotes #philosophy

Vandals listen only when others are stronger. If vandals are equal or stronger Their word is the last word. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #listening #literature #literature-quotes #others

What does literature do better than anything else? It provides a detailed representation of the inner experience of being alive in a given time and place. ↗

— Elif Batuman

#neuro-lit-crit #theory #experience