#literature

Bobby Fischer has an enormous knowledge of chess and his familiarity with the chess literature of the USSR is immense. ↗

— Boris Spassky

#chess #enormous #familiarity #fischer #his

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

#difficulty #him #literature #mean #precisely

The web, then, or the pattern, a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature. ↗

— Robert Louis Stevenson

#elegant #foundation #literature #logical #once

Believe it or not, my introduction to scary literature was 'Pinocchio.' My mother read it to me every day before naptime when I was three or four. The original 'Pinocchio' is terrifying. ↗

— R. L. Stine

#believe #day #every #every day #four

There is only one school of literature - that of talent. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#only #school #talent

It is no exaggeration to say that the English Bible is, next to Shakespeare, the greatest work in English literature, and that it will have much more influence than even Shakespeare upon the written and spoken language of the English race. ↗

— Lafcadio Hearn

#english #english literature #even #exaggeration #greatest

When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young. ↗

— Maya Angelou

#reading #self-discovery #youth #life

There is nothing in the world which an artist cannot recreate into something poetic, ennobling. And why do we read these things? They are not facts, they do not improve our business skills, our techniques in manufacturing goods, the management of a home. That is what most of you will be doing anyway. We read these because they teach us about people, we can see ourselves in them, in their problems. And by seeing ourselves in them, we clarify ourselves, we explain ourselves to ourselves, so we can live with ourselves… ↗

— F. Sionil José

#artist #creativity #filipino-authors #literature #poetry

Literature simply becomes richer after you've been fired, rejected, stranded, or had to change a few midnight diapers. ↗

— Christian Bauman

#books #literature #change

For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to this agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails…and when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever.” — Anonymous Curse on Book Theives from the Monaster of San Pedro, Barcelona, Spain ↗

— Anatole Broyard

#essays #literature #quotes-to-live-by #change