The crown of literature is poetry.

The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision. As long as we have books, we are not alone.

The crown of literature is poetry.

I grew up around books - my grandmother's house, where I lived as a small child, was full of books. My father was a history teacher, and he loved the Russian novels. There were always books around.

I read everything: fiction, history, science, mathematics, biography, travel.

I think that literature is something that embraces a much larger experience than politics. It's an expression of what is life, of what are all the dimensions of life. But politics is one among others.

Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.

Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.

Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.

Expand the definition of 'reading' to include non-fiction, humor, graphic novels, magazines, action adventure, and, yes, even websites. It's the pleasure of reading that counts; the focus will naturally broaden. A boy won't read shark books forever.

Books are the ever burning lamps of accumulated wisdom.

I love books; my suitcases are always full of them. Books and shoes. I read when I am sad, when I am happy, when I am nervous. My favourite British author is Jane Austen, and my favourite American one is John O'Hara.

Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is a metaphor, not just for books but for ideas, for language, for knowledge, for beauty, for all the things that make us human, for collecting memory.

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.

When I was growing up, my house was filled with books. My mother was an educator, and my father was a history buff, so our home was a virtual library, covering every author from Beverly Cleary to James Michener.

A love of books, of holding a book, turning its pages, looking at its pictures, and living its fascinating stories goes hand-in-hand with a love of learning.

Literature is a beautiful way of keeping the imagination alive, of visiting worlds you would never have time to in your day-to-day life. It keeps you abreast of a wider spectrum of human activities.

The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual - when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions - it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.

I studied literature design and fashion design.

Literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity.

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

The tradition of Russian literature is also an eastern tradition of learning poetry and prose by heart.

Oddly enough, my favorite genre is not fiction. I'm attracted by primary sources that are relevant to historical questions of interest to me, by famous old books on philosophy or theology that I want to see with my own eyes, by essays on contemporary science, by the literatures of antiquity.

Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing.

I read whenever possible, and I buy books all the time, sometimes online, but mostly from bookshops. I love literature. If you want to understand art, it's important to understand what is also happening in literature, in music, in science, in architecture.

Even if you only want to write science fiction, you should also read mysteries, poetry, mainstream literature, history, biography, philosophy, and science.

Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.

Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.

Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.

The Bible is not just one book, but an entire library, with stories, songs, poetry, letters and history, as well as literature that might more obviously qualify as 'religious.'

The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.

Books, the children of the brain.

You'll notice that my books offer great variety. Some are for adults, some for children and some for teens. There are mysteries, historical novels, picture books, love stories and stories of crisis and courage.

Film and TV are the most popular mediums in America. Literature and poetry are possibly the most under-recognized art forms.

Man is what he reads.

Before college, I hadn't voluntarily read anything that might be called literature; I didn't think I'd understand it; I never seemed to understand my English teacher's interpretations of what we read.

Literature is a state of culture, poetry is a state of grace, before and after culture.

Literature is dangerous: it awakens a rebellious attitude in us.

I read widely - for news, the arts, science, for entertainment, and the value of being informed - and, as a fiction writer, I can't help transposing what I learn into the scenario for a novel or story.