#literature

I know of no trunk full of old heirlooms, no felt hats or army uniforms. There are no tarnished medals or gold watches. I've stopped dreaming of discovering the old shoe box filled with the history of our family, the documents and letters that recorded our family's arrival and the historical milestones as my grandfathers left their mark on a place. There is no journal or diary. I do not know if they knew how to read or write. I could easily dismiss their existence. Their lives seem empty and still, void of emotion. I cannot tell if they wear scars. I only know of my grandfathers as broken old men. ↗

— David Mas Masumoto

#dreams

Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even sit up in bed till early dawn, trowing your whole tomorrow out of whack, simply to find out what happens to some people who, you know perfectly well, are made up. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolve

#literature #reading #experience

That cloak of love you were wearing—he’s torn it to shreds, undoing the seams of trust that held it together. How can you ever wear those shreds? ↗

— Antonia Michaelis

#love #metaphor #trust #love

...for most men are unaware that what is in the power of magicians to accomplish, that the heart can also accomplish by dint of love and bravery. ↗

— Joseph Bédier

#love

I want you forever. I will always be with you. I will always love you. I will love, honor, and cherish you for all eternity. ↗

— Katrina D. Miller

#lgbt-literature #love

The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemly or gravely. For he will read 'in the same spirit that the author writ.'... He will never commit the error of trying to munch whipped cream as if it were venison. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#books #criticism #humor #interpretation #literature

But you have read Madame Bovary?' (I'd never heard of her books.) 'No. ↗

— David Mitchell

#literature #humor

God really must have had a sense of humor, because if I had to name my biggest turn-on, it was literature. And he had just recommended a book that I didn’t know, that wasn’t taught in school. If I were single, there would be no better pick-up line. ↗

— Kody Keplinger

#turn-on #humor

I shouted the perfect words to scare him off. It was just the delivery (and only the delivery) that made me sound like a twelve-year-old girl with pee running down her leg. I felt dirty and stupid. ↗

— Graham Parke

#humor #literature #humor

Death is the Inevitable Price We Must Pay. ↗

— Ellen J. Barrier

#literature #novel #relatio #romance #death