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". . . finally, I couldn't imagine how I could live without books, and I stopped dreaming about marrying that Chinese prince. . . ."
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Exlpore more Literature quotes
"As far as now I can tell that most Stephen King fans don't know him well. They have read or viewed few works and their judge is based on them... that's now well knowing a writer!"
"Of all public figures and benefactors of mankind, no one is loved by history more than the literary patron. Napoleon was just a general of forgotten battles compared with the queen who paid for Shakespeare's meals and beer in the tavern. The statesman who in his time freed the slaves, even he has a few enemies in posterity, whereas the literary patron has none. We thank Gaius Maecenas for the nobility of soul we attribute to Virgil; but he isn't blamed for the selfishness and egocentricity that the poet possessed. The patron creates 'literature through altruism,' something not even the greatest genius can do with a pen."
"Alexander the Great slept with 'The Iliad' beneath his pillow. Though I've never led an army, I am a wanderer. I cradle 'The Odyssey' nights while the moon is waning, as if it were the sweet body of a woman."
"The lot of the brideto be wed before beddesired until rotten.The lot of the authorto be read before bedadmired then forgotten."
"A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest."
"An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better."
"It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel."
"Favoring 'resolution' the way we do, it is hard for us men to write great love stories. Why?, because we want to tell too much. We aren't satisfied unless at the end of the story the characters are lying there, panting."
"Every healthy person at some period must feed on fiction as well as fact; because fact is a thing which the world gives to him, whereas fiction is a thing which he gives to the world."
"Some books sold because they are (said to be) great. Some are (said to be) great because they sold."
Explore more quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky
"The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can always be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary story-tellers neglect as insignificant trifles. Oh, they have no thought to spare for such details, their minds are concentrated on their grand invention as a whole, and fancy any one daring to pull them up for a trifle! But that's how they are caught."
"And, beginning to grind his teeth again, Pyotr Petrovich admitted that he'd been a fool--but only to himself, of course."
"You needn't be afraid of life! Life is so good when you do something that is good and just."
"His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, usolved doubt. He is one of those who doesn't want millions, but an answer to their questions."
"Do you know that I love now to recall and visit at certain dates the places where Iwas once happy in my own way? I love to build up my present in harmony with the irrevocable past..."
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